Orvieto

I too a train down to Orvieto today with 3 other girls in the program. Its a really old (dating back to Etruscan times) town up on a hilltop. I've been before but knew it was a nice, pretty place to relax and wander, so I was happy to go back. However, after several days of exploring Florence on my own, travelling with other people (especiially ones I don't really know) was a bit annoying. We saw a few sites, but then these girls just didn't know how to wander medieval streets and discover things. Without a destination, they were a little lost. So we ended up not seeing a lot of the tiny town and going back to the train station much earlier than we needed too. Tomorrow, I'm going solo again.

We did see a couple neat things I don't think the family had done: "Orvieto Underground". This was a tour of underground caves which open up on the sides of the cliff and were originally Etruscan and then which the rich people in the Middle Ages used to catch pigeons (to eat).


(They carved the holes in the walls to encourage the pigeons to nest)









Then we went to a Roman well, which was really deep, and has a double staircase circling it, so you go down one side and climb back up another. Pretty fun.

Pitti Palace and Boboli Gardens

Today we spent all morning at the Pitti Palace and all afternoon at the gardens there (the Boboli Gardens). Fun times! (And happily my cold is getting better.) The Pitti Palace has just as good an art collection as the Uffizi, and you get to see it in sumptuous palatial rooms. And, there weren't nearly as many tourists. We weren't supposed to take pictures (again) but digital cameras make it so easy to be discreet that I couldn't help myself. We all had fun sneaking shots and avoiding guards. I only got caught once taking a picture, but even then the guard didn't seem to care too much.

Besides the royal apartments there is also a modern art gallery, which was very good, and a costume gallery which was great too. Besides giving a fashion history, they also have on view Cosimo de Medici I and his wife Eleanor of Toledo's clothes that they were buried in....meaning they were dug up a couple hundred years after their deaths. yuck.

After a quick lunch we went outside to see the Boboli Gardens. Unfortunately the weather was pretty gray and rainy, although I did remember my umbrella today. Rainy weather did mean, though, that there weren't many other tourists out there. I and a couple other girls spent about 3 hours wandering the gardens.



Just as we were leaving the sun decided to come out.

To the hills!

Well, I'm still ill, but well enough today to more or less enjoy myself.

We took a bus up the hill, a little past the town of Fiesole to an old villa (well, 100 years old, but apparently not old by Italian standards) where the company Casallini Libri is housed. This company works with libraries all over the world to supply them with European publications.

After showing us around and telling us about what they do, they fed us a yummy lunch and then let us explore their gardens. Then we got to go up their tower for nice views of the city and the hills. It didn't take me long to decide that I'd be happy to work for them. :)










From there we went a little ways away to the villa of I Tatti. This is the villa once owned by Bernard Berenson, who was an art scholar in the late 19th-early 20th century. He basically pioneered the field of Italian Renaissance Art History. He was also an agent for American art collectors of the era, such as Isabella Stewart Gardner, so we have him to thank for much of the Italian Renaissance art now in the U.S.

His villa is now owed by Harvard which operates a library and archive there for scholars....meaning that the only way you can see it or use their collections is if you have a PhD. I was happy to have the special chance to see the place. (I'd also be happy to get a job there too.)

Unfortunately, we weren't allowed in the actual villa itself (no one explained why), so we saw only the library, and we didn't get to see Berenson's supposedly amazing art collection. But the library was neat, and the gardens were gorgeous.

Don't go to the Uffizzi when you're sick

I think the title says it all.

Today was our tour of the Uffizzi, but I couldn't really enjoy it because a) I was coughing all the way through and getting woozy from all the lozenges I was eating and b) because I didn't get any sleep last night because of an earache. Who gets a cold in the summer?

Biblioteca Nazionale

Only 9 photos today. Can you believe that? This morning we went to the National Library, which is kind of equivalent to the Library of Congress, except that they have 2 here--one in Rome and this one in Florence. We got to take a tour and see all the behind the scenes stuff and we even got library cards which are good for life! Now I'll just have to learn to read Italian so that I can actually make use of my new card....

We had the afternoon free and I decided to take it easy. I had a nice big lunc of Gnocchi melanzane (gnocchi with eggplant, and a nice tomato sauce and lots of ricotta salata grated on top.) Then I went up to Fort Belvedere (where I tried going the other day, but which was closed) to sit in the park and relax and enjoy the view.

I woke up this morning with a cold...stuffy nose, sore throat, headache, the works. Yuck. I hope it doesn't last long.

In other news, I asked my landlord how to operate the washing machine. He showed me, and I had done everything correctly, and it didn't work for him....then he realized the water to it was turned off. :)

Class begins

(Be sure to click on this picture for a full size panorama)

I met with my class today and we had a nice introduction to the program and the city and then a group dinner this evening. There are 14 students, and only one weirdo. We had a walking tour of the city for most of the day--I have basically walked around the whole city, but this time it was with the benefit of a guide. The professor for the program is actually an architect, so he explained all the different styles of buildings and showed us how to tell wheat era any building in the city is from. Sort of. Then, we had a little free time this afternoon before dinner, so I went back to the Duomo to climb up the dome (because my legs haven't gotten enough exercise yet). I just finished reading Ross King's Brunelleschi's Dome which is all about how it was built. Actually, when they started building the Cathedral, they knew the dome was bigger than ever built before and knew that they had no idea how to engineer such a thing but just figured God would find a way for it to happen. And it happened. I think reading the book actually made more more afraid that the dome might collapse, but luckily that didn't happen while I was in it.





Today was remarkably hotter than it has been the past few days. Such weather called for more gelato.


The other excitement of the day was my attempt to do laundry. The machine in my apartment has 2 dials and five buttons, and what looks like 18 settings. The challenge was to successfully do a load without A) ruining my clothes B) flooding the apartment or C) breaking the machine. So far, after pressing all the buttons in different orders and turning the dials, while the machine is both on and off, I have not done any laundry. I have not flooded the apartment. I may or may not have broken the machine. I may have to ask my landlord tomorrow to show me how to use it. That may not help matters as he speaks no english and my Italian is limited to "Buon Giorno" and "Quanto Costi?" and my phrase book only has such things as "Can you do invisible mending?" ("Puo fare un rammendo invisible?"). I'll keep you posted...

Birthday Mis-adventures

It was gray and drizzly when I first woke up, so I took that as a sign to sleep in extra late today. I didn't end up going out until after noon (gasp!).

I had a good plan for a nice long walk today (yes, another one) which would take all afternoon and then lead me to Simon's favorite pizza place for dinner. Didn't quite work out like that. I crossed the river and headed uphill to Fort Belvedere. I got there around 1:15, but I discovered the fort didn't open until 2. I decided not to wait, since there wasn't really anywhere to sit and it was starting to rain again. I walked along the old fortification wall, downhill, and then when I got to an old city gate, headed back uphill and up lots of steps to San Minato al Monte. This is a really beautiful Romanesque church, with great views of the city and with great byzantine style mosaics.




I had been told that if you go late in the afternoon you can hear the monks chanting. But, I had overestimated how long it would take to get there, especially since I didn't stop at the fort. So I didn't get to hear the monks. They had a nice looking gift shop--at least what I could see through the window, but that didn' open until 3. I was ready to go at 2:40, but waited until 3:15 and no sign of the shop opening, so I missed that too.

From there, back downhill. This was supposed to be late in the day and near dinnertime. Alas, only 3:30. So I headed across town (again) to go to Santa Maria del Carmine, which is where the famous Brancacci Chapel is. Luckily I got there just before they closed. After that I was really hungry for gelato, but of course when you want some none is to be found.




I went home to rest before dinner. Then I went looking for Simon's other favorite restaurant in town, which wasn't too close. Another long walk--and guess what--it's closed! I had another couple restaurants written down on my map. I went to find another, but it didn't exist. So I went back to a vegetarian restaurant I had seen the other day near the synagogue. They had one free table left--lucky for me! The food was really yummy-- not Italian, but still good. I had cheese filled crepe thingies.

Alas, I never found cake for my birthday. I'll have to get some tomorrow.

May 24

Yesterday I explored the North and East sides, today the West and South.

--I started at Santa Maria Novella, which is a beautiful church with wonderful frescoes by several artists. I liked it even better than Santa Croce, which I saw yesterday. Of course, Santa Croce was entirely covered in scaffolding on the inside.



--Walked south to the river, then along the Arno for awhile and took a million pictures.

--I zigzaged through some medieval streets, then went to the Palazzo Davanzati which houses a museum of a medieval nobleman's life. It has been recently restored and it was a great museum with hardly anyone in it...and it was free!



--I crossed the river and headed to Santo Spirito, but they were closed for lunch.




--Next I took a long walk south to an old Roman gate of the city. My guidebook said you could climb up and walk along what remains of the old city wall, but the stairway up was locked shut. Too bad. Probably nice views from up there.



--I started walking back toward the city center and walked by La Specola--a zoological and anatomical musuem. I almost didn't go in, thinking the birthplace of the Renaissance is no place to go to natural history museum, but a friend at UT had recommended so I thought, why not? And what a place! It is full of taxidermied mammals, reptiles, birds and insects, and fish and amphibians in jars! Not all that gross, really, but I'm a little traumatized by seeing hundreds of dead animals. I counted over 300 specimens before I got tired of counting--and I was probably only halfway through at that point. There were all sorts of creatures I had never seen or heard of.



Photos weren't allowed, but eventually I decided that was a rule best ignored, so I found spots out of view of the security cameras and took pictures when no one was looking.


--After recovering from that, I zigzagged back over to Santo Spirito. It still wasn't quite open yet, so I got a gelato while I waited, tiramisu flavor. Mmmmm.

Note: I ordered a small, and I had already eaten half when I took the picture.

A Room with a View

Okay, not the best view or prettiest place, but it was the cheapest I could find.

The hills are Fiesole!

don't ask me why the photos are floating all over the page.

May 23

Dad was impressed with Katie's blog and was wondering why I was not so industrious. Not to be outdone, and especially since I have discovered free access to wi-fi from my apartment, I'll try it out.

I arrived on Wednesay and spent the day as a zombie wandering the city. Yesterday I did some more exploring and today the real site-seeing began.

Today's itinerary:

--Giardino dei Simplici


--Cimitero degli Inglesi
--Mercato di Sant' Ambrogio

I nearly gagged walking through the fish aisles, but in the outdoor stalls I bought some yummy goat cheese.
--Borgo degli Albizi, which is a street with all sorts of 14-15th century palaces.

--Gelato from Vivoli (the best in the world, apparantly)
--Santa Croce, now my favorite place in town.

--Some other stuff, but I was pretty much beat at this point and don't really remember .