San Vito

So the next leg of our journey was San Vito, a tiny little town (home of the architect Carlos Scarpa) where you'll find a tiny cemetery called Brion Cemetery. In which there is a memorial 'park' designed by Scarpa entirely out of site-cast concrete- and it's considered the most important work of his life. He's actually buried there. 

I wont go into detail about the memorial but it was really incredible. The whole thing was an analogy for what happens to a married couple in the after-life (namely the Brion Family). It was complete with tomb, reflecting pools, a chapel, and other amazing details. The use of water

 running through the site and the way he controlled light with the shapes and angles made me think he was clinically insane. 

There was this one part when you entered where you were supposed to mentally remove yourself from your body in order to prepare yourself for some intense reflection and spiritualization so Scarpa had a door there that was mirrored glass so you could see yourself, but instead of opening it, you had to reach up to the top and push the door down which slid into the floor. You were literally pushing your self image away and into the ground. It was so cool- the whole thing was filled with stuff like that. 

If you're ever in the area, check it out!

Verona

So i lied again, haha sorry... it's been two days. 

I left off in Florence- at the end of which we (my class and two professors) jumped on a bus and began the trip to Venice. Along the way however we made two stops to see the two most important pieces of architecture done by a man named Carlos Scarpa. The first was the

 Castel Vecchio Museum in Verona, and the second, the Brion Cemetery in San Vito. 

The Castle Vecchio Museum is, as you could guess, a collection of medieval art (paintings, sculpture, artifacts) put into the old Castle Vecchio. Carlos Scarpa designed the entire thing- and the man was so crazy he'd only ever visit the job site at night so he could use his flashlight and inspect only that which was highlighted by the little cone of light. But it paid off. The details and connections were amazing- we

 stayed there for two hours just sketching and noting these details. 

Probably pretty boring to you all, haha, but I loved it. We ended up just getting lunch in the square and back on the bus to San Vito!

Florence

hey everyone! so i'm really sorry it's been over a month since my last post :-( haha where on earth has the time gone.... and now i have so much to catch you all up on! I think i'll go in order and talk about one city per post, so hopefully in the next two weeks i'll have talked about most of my travels!

Today i'll start with Florence. (Firenze)

For the third leg of our journey with the class 

(first was pompeii, second paestum), we jumped on a bullet train from rome to florence, and arriving at our hotel (hotel medici, highly

 recommended) found ourselves right in the heart of the city. We were literally two blocks away from the d

uomo and we had a roof terrace that gave us an incredible veiw.

Florence was a great city to walk around in. As far as city planning goes, i'm sure you'll all be interested to know that it was the first entirely Roman city, founded in 1100 ad, so the romans laid it out on a specific grid. This was such a change from the maze of Rome i'm used to! 

While in Florence we hit all the major sites in two days. It 

was exhausting but we climbed the duomo to get an amazing 360 degree view of the city, saw michaelangelo's David,  the uffizzi, castel vecchio, palazzo dei innocenti, ponte vecchio, San Laurenzo and about ten thousand other churches

 including Santa Croce which housed the tombs of Michaelangelo, Dante, and Galileo! We also almost got into the Laurentian Library but got chased down by some lady who told us it was closed. I got the closest... i actually saw the front doors ;-)

One evening, after a lecture with our professor he l

ead us up to the top of one of the Florentine hills surrounding the city to one of the last remaining 

Bennedictan Monestaries (the monks that never leave) We made it just in time to

 catch the end of the evening mass and hear the monks singin

g- the church was huge, dark, dingy, and mixed with the gregorian chants coming from the basement under the altar was really haunting. And to top it off, when we walked out we got to watch the sunset over the  city. What a sight! 

Another funny part of the trip is worth mentioni

ng is the end of carnivale. We were there for tuesday (mardi gras) the day before ash wednesday, and Florence celebrated big time. There were crazy parties and parades going on in the streets with costumes and floats and madness. The parade passed right outside our hotel and a few of us decided to join in. It was about 11:45 at night, and 15 minutes later in the piazza outside San Laurenzo when the clock struck 12, a man with a megaphone told everyone to 'put out their cigarettes, put away their beer, and go home and pray' and sure enough, the music ended, noise went down, and everyone went home! 

All in all Florence was great, tiring but gave us some great street-side pizza experiences and lots of leather options ;-) End of the weekend came too soon and we hopped in a bus to start our three city tour: San Vito- Verona- Venice! More tomorrow!

Paestum

Paestum, Paestum, a similar city to Pompeii, but with a different fate. Strangely enough, the only answer archeologists can find for this city was that it was just abandoned around the same time as Pompeii's demise. Some say the deforestation around this city made them go elsewhere for food, but to leave an entire city, it's buildings, it's homes, pottery, jewlery, and everything else discovered here? weird.The treasures of Paestum (aside from the farm that makes the world's best mozzarella cheese which I'm eating as I type) are the three temples that still stand there

. 

Built in 800BC the builders stacked t

he stone in such a way that no mortar was used, and it's been standing there for the last 2800 years, withstanding two major earthquakes that knocked down most of the buildings in Pompeii pre-volcanic incident. Amazing! Like, nothing has been restacked like 

in rome, or placed in a certain way... it's the oldest standing post-and-lintel structure in the world! 

Not only was the fact that they're standing impressive, but the sheer mass of the temples was hard to take in. They were huge! I'm sure the pictures don't do it

 justice... and no one was ever allowed to enter any of then (Temple of Athena, Temple of Hera I, Temple of Hera II) EVER except for the priest. 

We studied some of the construction techniques

 and I wont' go into it, but you should wikipedia it or something, cause it's really interesting. Or i'll tell you when i come home... yay! right??

Also, we stayed the night here in Paestum in a lovely little place called Hotel Calypso, right on the Mediterranean coast! So beautiful. It wasn't really warm enough to swim, but we had a huge bamboo bonfire (with very poor structural integrity) at night, and spent the morning walking the shores. 

What a great time. Luckily, i'm not tired yet! I'm soooo excited for these next two weeks. Laura and I are dancing around our room as week pack! (literally). I don't have time to upload more pictures on Flickr, but as soon as i get back I'll probably have to spend three days doing it, haha.

Ok I love you all, and can't wait to tell you all these stories in person!

Pompeii

800 BC, 2800 years ago Pompeii was first settled. I'll save the extensive history of this port city, however it's really interesting. The archeological findings here really have only been uncovered over the last 100 years, and it's proven to be the best preserved ancient city on earth. 

This is because in 17 AD the entire city was petrified, frozen in time by the explosion of Mt Vesuvius. In a few short hours, the city and all 

its inhabitants that didnt escape to the sea were

 dead, frozen in time in the exact position they died in. There are actual bodies that have been uncovered in tortured positions, some couples, some mothers with children... really haunting. 

It was so powerful to walk through this city that still had door knobs in some case and window frames, and have a feeling like you could relate to the people that lived there. I mean, we are all so

 human, no matter where we are or when we lived. These people who lived 2800 years before us inhabited this little city and got up every morning to go to work in order to feed their families. They all felt hunger, a sense of family connections, the need for a higher power to make some sense of life for them; they sinned the same way, and sought forgiveness the same way. So crazy to think about, how human we are. 

Ok so that was dramatic, but it was such a strange experience! The scenery was absolutely amazing, with Mt Vesuvius (or what's left of it) just looming in the background. 

I could honestly go on and on about every one of these pictures, but I'm just doing a quick post on this weekends' trips! 

Next up, Paestum!

Biking Borghese

Sunday, (late post) Laura and I went on an adventure to enjoy the beautiful day. We started off by heading to the vatican to say hey to the pope when he stuck his head out to bless the crowds at noon.

 After checking out some gift shops, we headed

 up to Piazza del Popolo with it's twin churches.

 Off to the side 

of Popolo is the lookout of

 Villa Borghese. You

 have to climb up a ton of staircases and ramps, but at the top is an awesome

 view of the city, especially of the twin

 churches that look out on to Popolo.

At the top of the hill sits Villa Medici (one of several villas that sit on the Villa Borghese grounds). This whole area of Villas at the top has been turned into a HUGE park area (probably 

not as big as central park, but the same environment with lots of little monuments, playgrounds, and even a zoo inside). 

We decided the best way to see the whole park was to rent bikes, so for only 4 euro we toured the park on our city bikes! It was really nice- great weather for biking, and we got to see so much more than we would have on foot! 

After our biking adventure, and having a little caffe latte at the

 cafe, we headed back down to Piazza del Popolo and shop-hopped our way home through the stores along Via del Corso. Such a nice day!

Just so you know, I probably won't be posting for a while now, because this Saturday we leave for Pompeii and Paestum! 

I hope everyone is well, I love you all!

Frascati

In celebration of the festival of San Valentino, Adam and I took the day to venture through a little town about an hour outside of Rome called Frascati. Famous for it's white wine (the Frascati) and it's awesome views of Lazio (the province Rome is in,) Frascati is also the home of several Papal Villas, including the place Pope Benedict spends his July and August.

Getting off the train at the base of one of the Dolomite mountains, we began our decent, one staircase at a time up through the

 little town. You could literally walk along the edge of the whole town which hung off the side of the hill, and see the entire province of Lazio with the snow capped mountains in the background. It was sooo beautiful! 

The best part about the day was not having a map. We just wandered around the hills and the town, finding all these little treasures. We started

 hiking up the mountain at one point in search of a villa we'd heard about, and happened upon a different villa, Villa Tusculana which now happens to be a very exclusive hotel and even center. We helped ourselves to a walk around the grounds and the views were absolutely amazing. You could actually pick out isolated little hill towns in the distance. It was so beautiful! 

As we headed back down the mountain into the town, we found a beautiful little park where we played for a while. We also found this really amazing fountain that was fed by a natural stream

 coming out of the hills. At the top of the hill was one fountian, and it fell down through a series of waterfalls to another fountain. So cool. The fountains were gated off, however we found that if you walk through the woods towards them, there was a break in one of the gates... Being the vagabond college-aged tourists that we are, we naturally went in and explored. Luckily, at the bottom of the scummy fountain, we spotted a necklace that Adam so kindly fished out for me with a stick (the depth was no match for his Longenbach arms and a tree branch) The necklace smells like death, but after i boil it, i'll be a wonderful keep-sake with a great story behin

d it! A necklace found in the fountain of a Papal Villa in Frasacti.... not something you usually get for valentine's day!.... awesome. 

After walking around town for a while, and starting to recognize people from passing them several times we had dinner in a local pub, then headed back to rome on the train. It was a beautiful day- I'm so excited for our next adventures now! And to actually see the alps... hard to believe!

Anyway, thanks for checking in, i love you all!