mi piace venizia

when in rome…

So we decided to head to Rome for our second travel weekend. I was DYING to go to Barcelona, but Brendan convinced me otherwise because we would get more time in Rome to walk around, do stuff, etc. So Crystal Martin, Brendan and I headed out on an 8:30 train Friday morning and sped off to see one of the most incredible historic cities in the world. 

We dropped our stuff off at our hotel (Matisse Bed and Breakfast), which happened to have an all day “breakfast” bar with nutella and bread… pretty ideal setup for the student budget we’re running on. Similar to Florence, I will present you with an annotated to-do list of our adventures and musings…

[X] Coliseum (was the first thing we went to… it was SO refreshing to see something pre-Renaissance/non-religious. also it’s an absolutely unreal structure… inspiring to say the least.)

[X] Paladine/Roman Forum (came with the coliseum ticket, also just insane amounts of ancient ruins, massive freestanding pillars, toppled marble blocks… got some pretty artsy photos here if you see the blog post below)

[X] Pantheon (oldest standing open-top dome building)

[X] Trevi Fountain (I may or may not have put my hair in braids a la Lizzie McGuire and waited for an italian man to come sweep me off my feet on his little red vepsa)

[X] Piazza Navona (wide open square, massive epic fountains with statues of big naked men, artists selling paintings, you get the picture)

[X] Vatican City (dude. SO TOURISTY. while it was awesome and big, I got into some pretty deep convos about Catholicism and left there sweaty and HATING tourists. honestly the most crowded part of Rome)

[X] Sistine Chapel (in my non-academic opinion, I’ve got to say that this was NOT the coolest artistic masterpiece we saw in Italy… while definitely amazing, I found some of the scuolas in Venice and churches in Florence to be more impressive. perhaps I just found the sistine a little too overwhelming and hyped up?)

[X] St. Peter’s Basilica (saving grace of our Vatican City trip, so grandiose and we ran into our aussie friends from Florence during our tour here!)

[  ] Ride a vespa (upsetting failure… especially after channeling Lizzie at the Trevi too)

[X] Spanish Steps (too crowded!but chill if you can find a seat to people watch) 

[X] Scholar’s Pub (American bar with drinks, karaoke, and most importantly, Americans)

[  ] Meet new friends (ehh not so much besides an obnoxious British kid trolling Americans at the bars)

[  ] Run into “old” friends (some Boston College kids staying on San Servo with us were in Rome at the same time and seemed to have a little more of a game plan than we did. also saw the florence Aussies… always a sight for sore eyes)

[X] Eat on foodstamps (Brendan pushed for this, so we went to some pretty sub-par “restaurants” and had pizza or pasta [surprise!] for about 8 euros each)

[  ] Find where all the italians go at night (should have put more effort into this but the italian guys I met were creepy and the women seem to throw the stink-eye much too often)

[X] Kebabs (lunch? check. dinner? check. late night? check. we managed to eat 3 kebabs in 2.5 days… i’m pretty much infatuated with them at this point)

Every day we wandered for many hours, at a late lunch and then passed out in our hotel for 3 hours before rallying for a super late dinner and night excursions… Gotta say, I liked the pattern. Loved my pre-din nap and shower, although sometimes it was hard to get out of bed for dinner. We ended the weekend by almost missing our train (my calves hated me for days after this) and finally arriving back in Venice around 11pm to start the last week….

settimane tre

After such an amazing weekend in Florence, it was hard to get back into the daily grind of class, afternoon tours and a night time mandatory event. Buttttt somehow I seemed to get it together and “survive” the next toiling week here in Venice… Here’s what we did besides class:

Monday: tour of Tintoretto’s Scuola di San Rocco. To be honest, this was my fav visit thus far because 1) our TA gave the lecture instead of our soft-spoken teacher that likes to get sidetracked, 2) it was dark in the hall so it gave everything a dramatic glow, and 3) there were seats so we weren’t antsy or whiny. Well played, teaching staff. Oh, and it was actually also really cool:

Tuesday: learned about/toured the foreign (Greek, Turkish and German) communities in Venice… Honestly one of the most pointless tours because half of the things were closed and everyone was grumpy and tired (it’s Tuesday, you know).

More excitingly, we watched Merchant of Venice that night, with cookies, chips and wine . Ohhh, how I doth despise Shakespearen movies. But hey, today I didn’t hate it because it refreshed my memory of the plot line after I elected not to re-read it… freshman yr of high school wasn’t that long ago, right?.

Wednesday: we hung out in the ghetto. Jewish ghetto to be precise. We were guided by a rather frumpy, unhappy woman with a thick accent through three different synagogues. Literally, this guide hated us or something, as well as expected us to know all about Judaism despite the obvious lack of Jews in the group (PS. I overheard the teachers gossiping about how terrible she was, so hey it wasn’t just me being judgmental).

Regardless, we left there and had 3 hours to kill until our Vivaldi-esque concert in a church started. Our teacher left and our 26 and 24 year old TA’s decided that it was a great idea to buy some wine and sit on their rooftop terrace. Now THIS is the kind of thinking they should be getting paid for. Amen to good wine and a panoramic view of Venice…

We had an inexpensive dinner on foodstamps and headed off to the concert, where Brendan proceeded to VOMIT IN THE CHURCH because he is highly lactose intolerant and ate a full cheese pizza. Highlight of the day was seeing the usher’s face when he ran into the instrument storage room instead of the bathroom the second time. 

Thursday: we headed out on a 12-hour day trip to Ravenna, where we saw some ancient basillicas, tombs and mausoleums. It was quite the academic pregame for Rome, where Brendan, Crystal Martin and I were setting off to the next morning. It was refreshing to see pre-Renaissance tile murals instead of all fresco decorations in these churches, which was getting kind of old (I know, I know, but after a month they start to lose their splendor)… I LOVED the Basilica of San Vitale— it was stunningly dark and quiet, just the way a church should be. A random group of Austrian tourists started singing a hymn while we were in there and it reminded me of Christmas Eve service at my church, when you just feel some extra dimension of spirituality in the air. Okay, enough with the feelings talk, here were some pretty pics from the day:

Friday: no class… OFF TO ROME! stay tuned for my rome post.