Every year in Perugia during the third week in October there is a chocolate festival. It is called "Eurochocolate" and it is similar to Oktoberfest in Germany except it's chocolate instead in beer. Perugia is a small town about 3 hours outside of Rome. It is also, coincidentally, the place where Amanda Knox was studying abroad and her trial actually took place there only a few days before I (along with a billion other people from Europe) arrived for the chocolate festival.
The festival took place in the center of the town and every street you walked down there were a million white tents and each one had a different brand of chocolate. I bought a "chocolate card" for 6 euro which allowed me to visit different tents that would stamp my card and give me a free sample of their chocolate. With this card I got hot chocolate, a chocolate picture frame, Toblerone, chocolate smoothie, chocolate cones, chocolate muffin, chocolate bread, chocolate cream cheese, chocolate liqueur, and a few truffles. It was a really good deal. My favorite was the hot chocolate because it was basically hot pudding. On top of all the free samples I also purchased plenty of chocolate to take back home with me.
The downside of the trip was that it ended up being freezing cold and all I had was a sweatshirt so I ended up buying a coat on the second day because I was basically frozen.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Classes/Film Festival
Since I didn't travel anywhere this past weekend, I figured I would blog about my classes and more about my everyday life in Rome. This is my schedule:
Monday:
12-1 Literature
1-2 Rome as a Living Museum
4-6 Italian
Tuesday:
12-1 Archaeology
4-6 Italian
Wednesday:
9:30-11:30 Literature
12-2 Rome as a Living Museum
3-5 Italian
Thursday:
12-2 Archaeology
3-5 Italian
For "Rome as a Living Museum" and "Archaeology", I have a one hour lecture once a week that takes place in the classroom and then for the 2 hour block, we meet on site somewhere in Rome at the Colosseum or a church or the Forum etc. and we walk around and actually see the things we are learning about in class.
My literature class is interesting. We only read excerpts from authors that have traveled to Italy and written about it. So each week we focus on a different author who has written a sort of travel journal on different parts in Italy. Definitely not my favorite kind of reading. We also have to write a journal entry once a week in our own travel journals. I'll let you know how that goes when I start writing mine.
I have Italian every day for 2 hours which gets to be a lot, especially by the end of the week, but I really feel like I am learning the most in that class and my Italian has improved a lot from knowing basically nothing which is helpful when I talk to people in the city.
On Monday, Tuesday and Thursday evenings I have dinner with my host family. We usually have some sort of pasta dish with bread and salad. On Wednesdays I go the grocery store and get stuff to take for lunch and for dinner that night, or I go out to eat with friends. The grocery stores in Italy are small and the portions of food they sell are small, too. Most Italians go to the grocery store every other day if not every single day because they can only buy small amounts of food at a time.
This past weekend, there was a documentary film festival in Rome. I love documentaries so on Friday and Saturday I went to this movie theater located in a park on the north side of Rome. The theater actually looked very American, which I wasn't expecting. It was a lot cleaner than American theaters though. And there wasn't a place to buy snacks before the movie. The documentary on Friday night was called "The Horse Boy". I saw previews for it before I left for Italy so I was really excited to see it at the film festival. It was in English and it was about a little boy who has autism so his parents take him to Mongolia to see the shamans that live there so they can help him with some of the more severe parts of his autism. It was a really good movie. The next night I saw "Position Among the Stars". It was in Indonesian and it was about the struggle of a poor family from Jakart that wanted to send their daughter to college, but it was too expensive. Luckily, there was English and Italian subtitles so I could follow along.
Monday:
12-1 Literature
1-2 Rome as a Living Museum
4-6 Italian
Tuesday:
12-1 Archaeology
4-6 Italian
Wednesday:
9:30-11:30 Literature
12-2 Rome as a Living Museum
3-5 Italian
Thursday:
12-2 Archaeology
3-5 Italian
For "Rome as a Living Museum" and "Archaeology", I have a one hour lecture once a week that takes place in the classroom and then for the 2 hour block, we meet on site somewhere in Rome at the Colosseum or a church or the Forum etc. and we walk around and actually see the things we are learning about in class.
My literature class is interesting. We only read excerpts from authors that have traveled to Italy and written about it. So each week we focus on a different author who has written a sort of travel journal on different parts in Italy. Definitely not my favorite kind of reading. We also have to write a journal entry once a week in our own travel journals. I'll let you know how that goes when I start writing mine.
I have Italian every day for 2 hours which gets to be a lot, especially by the end of the week, but I really feel like I am learning the most in that class and my Italian has improved a lot from knowing basically nothing which is helpful when I talk to people in the city.
On Monday, Tuesday and Thursday evenings I have dinner with my host family. We usually have some sort of pasta dish with bread and salad. On Wednesdays I go the grocery store and get stuff to take for lunch and for dinner that night, or I go out to eat with friends. The grocery stores in Italy are small and the portions of food they sell are small, too. Most Italians go to the grocery store every other day if not every single day because they can only buy small amounts of food at a time.
This past weekend, there was a documentary film festival in Rome. I love documentaries so on Friday and Saturday I went to this movie theater located in a park on the north side of Rome. The theater actually looked very American, which I wasn't expecting. It was a lot cleaner than American theaters though. And there wasn't a place to buy snacks before the movie. The documentary on Friday night was called "The Horse Boy". I saw previews for it before I left for Italy so I was really excited to see it at the film festival. It was in English and it was about a little boy who has autism so his parents take him to Mongolia to see the shamans that live there so they can help him with some of the more severe parts of his autism. It was a really good movie. The next night I saw "Position Among the Stars". It was in Indonesian and it was about the struggle of a poor family from Jakart that wanted to send their daughter to college, but it was too expensive. Luckily, there was English and Italian subtitles so I could follow along.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Pisa/Florence
On Friday morning a couple of friends and I took a train from Rome to Pisa to see the Leaning Tower. We got there around 2 in the afternoon and for some reason even though it is the smallest town ever, the train station was located as far away as possible from the Tower so we had to walk all the way across town to get there. It only took about half an hour though. The Tower was actually a lot more leaning that I expected. It really does look like it is about to topple over at any moment. It is leaning about 15 feet to the south side. We bought tickets to go up to the top of the tower. The way it works is you buy a ticket for a 40 minute slot of time in the Tower and after 40 minutes you have to be out. It's actually a lot of work to get to the top because the Tower is so tilted that it makes it much more difficult to walk up because it increases the steepness of the steps and the staircase itself is only about a foot wide. Once we walked out onto the top it is so slanted that I definitely would've slipped off the top of the Tower if there wasn't a rail around the outside. The view from the top of the Tower was really beautiful. You could see the green Tuscan landscape and in the background there were mountains. The tower is not used for anything at all except for people to take pictures of and marvel at how it is standing even though it is so slanted (@Katie Luna). After checking out the Tower and taking a nap in the grass in front of it, we hopped back onto the train to Firenze (aka Florence). By the time we arrived in Florence it was dark outside so we checked into the hostel and went to dinner. For dinner I had gnocchi with fresh pesto sauce. The pesto was delicious. For dessert I had homemade tiramisu with a cappuccino. The tiramisu was the best ever. I need to learn how to make it. I could eat it everyday.
The next day we woke up and went straight to the Galleria Academia where the David by Michelangelo is located. Luckily we got there just before the line started to get insanely long so we only had to wait about half an hour to get into the museum. The temporary exhibit was Lorenza Bartolini sculptures, the most well-known of which is "Nymph and the Scorpion". Other than that it was a lot of sculptures of heads. After leaving that exhibit, we ended up right in front of the David. It was gigantic, a lot bigger than I pictured it. The details on it were amazing, right down the each and every muscle and vein. We spent a long time in the room with the David because technically we were not allowed to take pictures but we waited for the guards to look away and then snap a few, along with every other visitor there. I got a few pretty good pictures. After that, we had lunch (tortellini with meat sauce) and then we headed to the Duomo. We had to wait in line for about 30 minutes and then bought tickets to walk to the top. At one point we got to walk around the inside of the top of the Duomo so we could see the frescos painted on the ceiling. They were really amazing. After almost dying from walking up the 463 steps to the top, we reached the top and were outside around the very top of the Duomo. The view ended up being worth climbing up all those stairs. Our tickets that we bought to go the top of the Duomo also gave up entrance to the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo. The most well-known piece in this museum was Donatello's "La Maddalena", which is a sculpture of an anorexic Mary Magdalene. After the museum, we went to the Palazzo Vecchio in Piazzo Signoria. This piazza is basically a free museum because it has a replica of the statue of David in it along with the original of "Perseus Holding the Head of Medusa" by Cellini, along with a lot of other lesser known statues. The piazza is right outside of the Uffizi museum that has Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus", but unfortunately we did not have a chance to visit this gallery. We left this piazza and went to the Ponte Vecchio which is a famous bridge in Florence that crosses the river Arno that runs through the city. Along the bridge are a lot of jewelry shops and from the outside of the bridge it looks like it is lined with little houses. There was also a band playing music on it. We crossed to the other side of the bridge and walked to Piazza di Pitti which is on the grounds of the Palace of Pitti. There was a couple on the top of the castle, while we were sitting in the Piazza below, taking wedding photos. We left the piazza and went looking for the house of Galileo. We ended up having to walk up an extremely steep hill to get there. We felt bad for Galileo because he had to walk up the hill everyday. But there was a really nice view from where his little apartment building was so that must have been nice. Also, interestingly enough the building was for sale so if anyone would like to buy Galileo's house, you can! After that we had dinner at a little restaurant by the Ponte Vecchio. On the way back to our hostel we stopped at the restaurant that we had eaten at the night before get coffee and their amazing tiramisu again!
On Sunday we woke up and went to the Santa Maria Croce church that holds the tombs of Michelangelo, Galileo, and Dante. After that we went to the Cathedral that is attached to the Duomo. It was a really fancy church. We ate lunch and then caught a train home.
I think I found a computer that will let me upload my photos using just the memory card in my camera so be on the look out for those!
The next day we woke up and went straight to the Galleria Academia where the David by Michelangelo is located. Luckily we got there just before the line started to get insanely long so we only had to wait about half an hour to get into the museum. The temporary exhibit was Lorenza Bartolini sculptures, the most well-known of which is "Nymph and the Scorpion". Other than that it was a lot of sculptures of heads. After leaving that exhibit, we ended up right in front of the David. It was gigantic, a lot bigger than I pictured it. The details on it were amazing, right down the each and every muscle and vein. We spent a long time in the room with the David because technically we were not allowed to take pictures but we waited for the guards to look away and then snap a few, along with every other visitor there. I got a few pretty good pictures. After that, we had lunch (tortellini with meat sauce) and then we headed to the Duomo. We had to wait in line for about 30 minutes and then bought tickets to walk to the top. At one point we got to walk around the inside of the top of the Duomo so we could see the frescos painted on the ceiling. They were really amazing. After almost dying from walking up the 463 steps to the top, we reached the top and were outside around the very top of the Duomo. The view ended up being worth climbing up all those stairs. Our tickets that we bought to go the top of the Duomo also gave up entrance to the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo. The most well-known piece in this museum was Donatello's "La Maddalena", which is a sculpture of an anorexic Mary Magdalene. After the museum, we went to the Palazzo Vecchio in Piazzo Signoria. This piazza is basically a free museum because it has a replica of the statue of David in it along with the original of "Perseus Holding the Head of Medusa" by Cellini, along with a lot of other lesser known statues. The piazza is right outside of the Uffizi museum that has Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus", but unfortunately we did not have a chance to visit this gallery. We left this piazza and went to the Ponte Vecchio which is a famous bridge in Florence that crosses the river Arno that runs through the city. Along the bridge are a lot of jewelry shops and from the outside of the bridge it looks like it is lined with little houses. There was also a band playing music on it. We crossed to the other side of the bridge and walked to Piazza di Pitti which is on the grounds of the Palace of Pitti. There was a couple on the top of the castle, while we were sitting in the Piazza below, taking wedding photos. We left the piazza and went looking for the house of Galileo. We ended up having to walk up an extremely steep hill to get there. We felt bad for Galileo because he had to walk up the hill everyday. But there was a really nice view from where his little apartment building was so that must have been nice. Also, interestingly enough the building was for sale so if anyone would like to buy Galileo's house, you can! After that we had dinner at a little restaurant by the Ponte Vecchio. On the way back to our hostel we stopped at the restaurant that we had eaten at the night before get coffee and their amazing tiramisu again!
On Sunday we woke up and went to the Santa Maria Croce church that holds the tombs of Michelangelo, Galileo, and Dante. After that we went to the Cathedral that is attached to the Duomo. It was a really fancy church. We ate lunch and then caught a train home.
I think I found a computer that will let me upload my photos using just the memory card in my camera so be on the look out for those!
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