More pictures

Ponte Veccio in Florence
Us at the Villa d'Este in Tivoli
Hadrian's Villa
The menu touristico is named Raffaello, Michaelangelo, and Leonardo. Pretty funny!
Michealangelo's Pieta
Parthenon
The Colloseum, we evetually got inside on a later trip
Trevi Fountain, world's most beautiful fountain

Pompeii, Venice, and Tarquinia

I'm really, really, really far behind in keeping up with this journal. Guess the virtual journaling option is no more productive than the pen and paper. But quickly, here is a rundown of the last 2-3 weeks.

2 weekends ago, the group went to Naples, stopped in the National Archaeological Museum, and then headed to Pompeii. The museum was interesting, with a great collection of fine mosaics discovered in Pompeii and elsewhere. Very intricate and large, often placed in the floor of aristocrats' homes.

Pompeii was incredible, very large, and very well maintained by the volcanic disaster there in 79AD if I remember correctly. The entire town was basically preserved, and it looks like it was abandoned in the state in which we walked through it. Streets are cobbled; very hard to walk in. We walked around as a group, stopping in particular homes of interest, as well as checking out the small arena and the gymnasium. The baths or spas were very interesting. They were used not only for hygenic purposes, but also as a social place of gathering. Routinely built right into your afternoon list of things to do. Go to the baths and hangout. The coolest thing about Pompeii was the molds of the humans and even dogs that were cast in the dirt after the volcano spewed its gasses everywhere. Although the organic matter disintegrated over time, the spaces were left to be filled in plaster, preserving the form of the dead as they had fallen. Very interesting to see, quite a thought provoking experience. Nevertheless, Pompeii rejuvenated itself and there are still people living within close proximity to this active beast. Guess we'll never learn.

Last weekend, Nicole and I headed to Venice after stopping in Ravenna with the group. Venice was very nice to see again. Really, just imagine getting around New Orleans when the flooding is really bad, and you've got Venice. I really don't think it is that romantic of a place, but who am I to say not being a romantic kind of guy. Venice of course prides itself terribly on its tourist appeal, and Nicole and I made a great trip of it, getting to see the Basillica of San Marco, Doge's palace (home of the world's largest oil painting), the Galleria dell'Academia, and the Guggenheim museum. Doge's palace was quite impressive. Home to the major of Venice basically, Doge's palace gave a thorough historical lesson into the government breakdown of Middle Age's Venice, complete with the Doge, Council members, and general councils where basically any male took part in the political process of electing a new Doge. Supposedly the election process for the Doge was very thorough and complicated, to discourage cheating and voter mischief, which I thought was intuitive. We ended up in the royal prisons where we belong by the end of the tour. Very depressing conditions prisoners had to live in back in the day. Certainly makes our "club houses" for prisons back home look more humanitarian.

Nothing noteable at the Academia, but the Guggenheim was the best part of the day. I have a new favorite artist: Rene Magritte! This guy blows my mind. The few Guggenheim museums (New York, Vegas, and Spain) are all devoted to modern or contemporary art, or basically since the expressionist and surrealist movements of the early 20th century. Picasso, Miro, Caulder, you name it. Every other piece you've seen somewhere in your life. They especially had a very nice exhibit of Jackson Pollick which was incredible. Nicole told me some of his pieces are priceless, but they're all just a bunch of dripped paint to me! :) Still very enjoyeable. Paid our respects to Peggy G and her Shitzus and we left with half the gift shop.

my favorite magritte painting

Today, the group headed to Tarquinia to visit the best collection of Etruscan graves from the VI c BC. Fun part was we hit the beach in the afternoon and we dipped our feet in the Mediterraneon Sea. Beach was all dark sand! Very neat.

Tomorrow we finish our classes with finals and then we head out Saturday to Milan and the rest of Europe. Should be a very full last 3 weeks, but it has been a great time in Italy. More adventures lie ahead, including visiting Marissa hopefully.

~Giovanni

Picture time!

Thanks Steve!

Really quick about last weekend. Naples, Pompeii, and Paestrum were all great. I will write about them later, but here are some pictures for you all to view! Hopefully they won't limit me to 2 or something lame. I thought I might have to download Picassa (long story, nevermind). Enjoy!



This is the great view from Castel Sant'Angelo. Great views of the entire city.

Spanish steps...damn Lancome.

This is what John Paul's tomb looks like in the catacombs of St. Peter's. Have great video also.

I will expound later, sorry for the short post. Mom, the visit with Fr. George in Rome last Monday was great. Awesome to have dinner and chat with him and Sister. They send their love and regrets about Grandma.

This weekend is Ravenna and Venice for me. I will be more thorough in the next post, including recaps of Assisi and Pompeii!

Love yall,

John

Today is Naples...

And its 4:30AM, guess who's a happy camper. We are being trucked the 4-5 hrs it takes to get from Orvieto to Naples and Pompeii today. I'm really excited to see Pompeii; we had a mini-lecture about it yesterday with the whole volcano explanation. Sounds like that would be on the bottom of my list of ways to go. I'm sure there is a movie about it, I'd like to see how they protray it happening. Anyways, from a historical perspective, it will be interesting to see the perfect preservation of historical sights.

Yesterday was very neat here in Orvieto. The very very good news is Nicole is happy because we had Cordon Bleu for dinner. With french fries to boot! Taking a break from all the Italian food never felt so invigorating. The other very good news is there was a free "concert" last night that I attended. They showed a silent movie that looked like it had been made in 1919. No biggy right? Well throw in a full symphony orchestra in front of it and things become a whole lot more interesting. How do you top it all off? Charge absolutely nothing. Mamma mia! What a country... I can't tell you what the movie was about, somekind of backstabbing drama for the thrown of the Roman kingdom. They symphony was great, and the setting in the duomo (the large basilica here) was very nice to see at night. Great times.

In other news, (MOM) I'm meeting Fr. George on Monday in Rome. The nun he is traveling with (or was meeting there?) had a spill in Assisi and is pretty nicely bruised, so he is caring for her in Rome. Nicole and I will take our Etruscan art test on Monday, then split early to go see the Colloseum on the inside, plus Michaelangelo's Moses in one of the nearby churches. Will let you know how that goes.

Next weekend is Venice, looking forward to that. Will write more later about our early days in Rome on this trip.

Ciao.

Assisi and Perugia (Middle Italy)

Today was wet, lots of rain throughout the morning which really put a drag on our touring of Assisi. Julie, the summer here this year is very mild. Highs only in the low 80s, with rain about once a week. No pushing 100 this year I'm afraid, and I really do because my wardrobe planned on it. Nicole already purchased another pair of jeans, but she's always on the chillier side. But back to Assisi.

Got to visit the famed Basilica of Francis in the heart of Assisi. The building itself is 3 layers really, with the very bottom boasting a very modest (no surprise knowing Francis) tomb of St. Francis surrounding by his 4 Friar buddies. The tomb was magnificent...of course no photos (or TALKING for that matter), but it was very beautiful. Wish I could have spent more time down there, but I was with our school group on this tour leg. The middle section houses a smaller chapel where I would presume the Fanciscans participated in most of their private prayer services. The walls are plastered with wonderful frescoes of Francis throughout his life, particularly by Giotto FYI. Some frescoes focused on Francis receiving the stigmata, others the visions of the pope seeing Francis refocus in essense the entire Catholic church back to a more humble frame of mind. The top layer (basically ground level) was a more grandeur community church with more frescoes, but these have badly deteriorated, to the point where they look like photo negatives. Still lovely...quick trip however, we were out of there within an hour and a half.

Next stop was Perugia, where we saw the Meseum dell'Academia, which basically is the primary art museum in the city. No particular artist stands out in this collection, but it certainly must have been hard to stand out back in the day because every topic is either Madonna with Child or the Annunciation, or the Crucifix. Nice to see artistic differences, but I've seen 50 billion of these by now and I'm getting a little "full". Perhaps I'm still spoiled from the Uffizi. Was a nice tour really, especially since everytime the school takes us on these trips, they pay for everything. This weekend for example, they're busing us all the way down to Naples and Pompeii. Only sacrifice I guess is that you don't get to spend as much time in each destination, but that's not too much of a problem.

Perugia is also known as the best chocolate makers in Italy, much to Nicole's delight. So of course we purchased probably a pound of it before we left. I'm a fan of the late night snack after dinner kind of chocolate eater, while Nicole could probably eat this stuff like its trail mix. :) She likes it, don't mean to poke fun. Steve, Nicole really enjoyed the shops very much on the Ponte Veccio, cuz we thought it would be fun to see if by chance we'd find wedding bands, but to no avail. We actually watched the sun set in Florence the last night we were there, and the Ponte Veccio was the backdrop. It was really pretty. Pictures of course to come.

I don't know how I'm going to show you guys pictures, but I'm trying to figure out if this blog space will actually host some space that I can swap out a picture or two ever so often. Worse case, I'll just zip some up and send them out, although that requires more work on your part. I'll find a way though.

Tomorrow we have our first exam in Classical Art and the Ideal. We are learning about the Orientalizing influence in ancient Greek art around the 6th-7th century BC. Not very thorough class, kind of superficial, but we'll see how the test goes.

Hope you all enjoy seeing each other in Chicago for the weekend. Wish I could be there, really I do. Safe trip for all of you.

Pisa today!

Today we woke up ready to head to Pisa. We checked out of our hostel and headed for the train station which was nearby and boarded a train around 8:30AM. Pisa is actually a pretty small city, only a 30 min walk to the Piazza Duomo where the tower, duomo, and a bevy of other landmarks dot the soft soil that evidently produces its tilt.

This thing looks like it could fall over if you blow on it! We got some great pictures, attended mass in the duomo (which had awesome frescoes and paintings), and visited the baptistry and Caposante, which is an ancient Roman burial ground. There was a lot of devastation left after the bombing of WW2. Many frescoes were destroyed, but it is still considered a prominent artistic destination in Pisa. After that, we headed back through town, grabbed some gilato, and boarded a train back to Florence.

We didn't have enough time to visit Santa Maria Novella in Florence, so we visited it before it closed at 5PM. Being just across the street in Florence from the train station, it was an easy landmark to hit. They had some very nice tombs in there of the Medici family as well as wonderful frescoes by Fernando Lippi. There is also a famous frescoe claimed to be the first to experiment with 3D aspects of depth. It looks like this:
*Image coming soon*

Nice quick stop after that at McDonalds for dinner before heading back to Orvieto. I miss ice and ketchup! American cheese actually sounds good as well. Fries taste the same luckily. What an exhausting 3 days, great things seen and many streets conquered.

Class tomorrow....boo!

Florence Day 2

Today was very full! Wow, where do I start. Nicole and I woke up early so that we could get to the Uffizi museum. It is the most famous museum for Renaissance art and on par with the Louvre in my opinion. We were at the museum by 7:30AM and there was already a line of 100 people! Talk about a hot ticket.

2 hours later, we're in the door. After grabbing an audio guide, we headed for the second floor where the collection spans from early Christian Madonna's to the likes of Michaelangelo, Raphaello, da Vinci, and Carvaggio (Nic's favorite). We saw so many great pieces, we will have to wait to show the book that we bought after the tour. Nic spent a ton in the giftshop; as always, she's the shopper for the two of us.

After the Uffizi (mind you, this is 2PM, we spent 5 hours or so in the dang place), we headed for the church of Santa Croce where the tombs of Michaelangelo and Galilelo are. They have many people burried there, sort of unorthodox to have people burried right there in the church. Lots of nice art pieces as well. Quick stop.

After that, we headed back to the Duomo in the center of town to climb Brulleschi's dome (a major engineering marvel for his time, even today really). It took all 400+ steps to get to the top, but it provided a very nice view of the frescoes on the dome as well as great views of Florence in all directions. Got great pictures and video.

Tonight we're gonna head down to the River Arno and walk around, admire the Ponte Veccio, and find a restaurant. Then we're gonna try Italy's greatest gelateria, Vovoli. We'll let you know how it is...should be good if it's the best!

Tomorrow we head to Pisa to see the tower, and hopefully have a day where we're not running around like we have the past two days. Our trip to Florence has been very successful, what a great city! My favorite over Rome I must admit, wish the Vatican was here that's all.

Cheers!