Since four months in Europe wasn't enough, I have decided to join the Engineers Without Borders organization on their adventure to Ecuador. We will be designing and building a new water storage system, as well as educating the community about sanitation, hygiene and health. We will spend several days working on the projects, and have a few days to sightsee and relax. I'm going to go through all my preparations for Italy, which is going to be really depressing since I'm not still there.
More to come! Adios!
Cara Marie
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Thursday, June 9, 2011
The rest of Europe....
Well, I'm home. I've been home for several weeks now, just been too unmotivated to post anything. So I guess I'll sum up after travels as best as I can. Wow, I just checked my last post, and there is a lot to talk about...
Prague during the day was great, we toured all over the city - Dan wore us out with all the sight-seeing. My favorite part was climbing to the top of a hill (which was a struggle, Kelsey and I took our time and lost the group a few times) to see the Czech version of the Eiffel Tower. They say the hill counts as the bottom, and it is at the same elevation as the tower in Paris. It was great to run into a beer garden for a quick sausage and PEPSI before going to the top of the tower to get a bird's eye view of Prague. Other things we saw included a palace, a really Gothic church, a baroque church, and lots of little tourist shops featuring Russian dolls, glass sculptures and other trinkets.
We were exhausted by dinner time so we grabbed a bite at a pub (which, I'm sorry to tell you, had an English menu) and went to bed. Kelsey and I lucked out and had our 4-bed room to ourselves the whole time we were in Prague, so we slept wonderfully and had lots of space to spread our luggage out...all over the room. On our last day in Prague we did a little souvenir shopping and then Thomas and Beth met up with Kelsey and I down by the river to go paddle-boating! We got a four person boat, which only two people have to paddle, and Kelsey and I lounged in the back while Beth and Thomas escorted us around the river. It was a very relaxing ride until we ran into some ducks committing homicide on a fellow duck. No joke, there were about six ducks beaking and drowning another duck! I don't know what that duck did, but they chased him out of the water and continued to peck at his head on the shore! I have video, but it's pretty graphic. We completed our wind down by listening to some live music at a outdoor pub on the river's shore we had seen on our paddle boat ride.
Our Prague trip ended that Tuesday morning and Kelsey and I left our travel grouped and ventured to Munich on our own. As we arrived at our hostel and checked in, however, Marissa and Anna Bliss walked through the lobby. They happened to be staying at our same hostel on our same floor for the first two nights we were there! We got moved into our room and cleaned up, and headed to the famous Englischer Garten, which is two times the size of Central Park in New York and jam-packed with beer gardens and active, happy people (probably drunk). We wandered around until we found the most popular beer garden, the Chinese...something. There is a large pagoda surrounded with picnic tables and happy Germans with huge beer mugs. Kelsey and I jumped right into the culture, and got "what she's having." So, we ended up with a huge pint of I-don't-know-what, but it was tasty! Anna and Marissa met us there and helped us finish our drinks so we could get some dinner. We went to Hofbrauhaus for dinner, and I ordered sausage which came in a white ceramic pot soaking in hot water and a side of sweet mustard. It looked disgusting, but was quite tasty! I had a pretzel too, and Kels and I split a beer. The inside of Hofbrauhaus smells like feet and frat house, so if I ever go back to Munich I'm going to stick to the outdoor beer gardens that have wonderful ventilation.
The next day we had a day trip to Fussen, Germany, where the famous "Disney castle" Neuschwanstein is, and another smaller castle, unimportant because it's not a Disney castle. Anna and Marissa had a tour guide, but Kelsey and I took our time wandering through the hillside up to the castle, and avoided all the horse-drawn buggies as best we could because of our Florentine trauma. We made it to the top and took way too many pictures with the beautiful castle. We went inside the gateway and saw the castle up close, and then followed signs that led to a bridge. The bridge was terrifying to walk on, but very worth the effort because of the amazing view of the castle. From the bridge we saw a ski lift to the top of another hill, which I am definitely going to look into the next time I'm in Germany...in my next life.
That evening we found a carnival - Munich's Spring Festival, basically just a reason to have a mini Oktober-fest. There were carnival rides and food stands, but everything seemed oddly quiet. Nobody was on the rides, or walking around, so we kept wandering farther into the carnival until we came to a large tent that had drunk people spilling out and German girls and boys dressed in their traditional outfits rushing in. This was where the party was! We ordered a beer and some food and watched the chaos of people dancing on tables and singing cheers and drinking beerstein after beerstein. It was at this point I wished I was German, real bad. After we had been sitting there a while wishing we knew what was going on, some German boys came up to our table and asked to sit with us, I think. It was so loud in there I thought I just couldn't hear what this boy was saying, but after a good five minutes of saying "What?" and just smiling and laughing, we both realized he was speaking German and I was speaking English. Then we just sat there for a bit and he laughed and said, "Am I really talking English? You understand me?" Ha! I told him he was doing very well, and asked what time the carnival ended. He answered with, "Eleven-and-a-half, twelve."
We left the carnival, not sure why because I was having fun people-watching, but just outside the tent a very confused drunk girl ran away and left her keys on the ground. Understanding how frustrating it is to lose keys, I picked them up and ran after her. I handed them to her and she said, "where did you get these?" She was obviously beyond drunk and I think she thought I stole them. I told her she dropped them and she stood there, very confused, and I told her I was going to walk away now... So I turned around and heard footsteps after me. As I walked back towards the girls they let me know she was following me. When she caught up to me, she said, "what are you doing?" I said I don't know, and she said, "I don't know what I'm doing either." I said, "okay, we're going to leave now....bye..." And she stood there, stared at her keys, looked at me, thanked me, stood there, looked at her keys, and finally walked off again. I hope she made it home, but for some reason I have my doubts.
As we were leaving the carnival a member of our group needed to use the restroom, very badly. She ran ahead of us and went down the excessively long escalator to the subway. She was so far ahead of us that as we stepped onto the escalator to go down, she was approaching the top again because there was no restroom. I evaluated the situation, and decided it would be best to turn around and run up the down escalator. Kelsey looked at me like I was crazy as I told her to turn around and run. She complied, and as I reached the flat part of the escalator and thought it was okay to stop running, I somehow I tripped over Kelsey's feet, landed half on the escalator and half on the ground. I realized that it was pulling half my body down so I scrambled into an army crawl to get off the escalator, and stood up to find Kelsey laughing hysterically at me. Now we were all of a sudden the ones that needed to use the restroom because we were laughing so hard. What an interesting night.
We made it to our hostel safely, and Marissa and Anna left early the next morning. Kelsey and I spent our last day in Germany visiting the Dachau concentration camp, which was an unforgettable experience. Our tour group didn't have time to visit the bookstore which I was bummed about, but I did steal a pebble from the role-call square. That afternoon we visited some shops and did some souvenir searching, finished with a delicious meal and some "apfelstrudle."
Our next destination was Salzburg, Austria, home of Mozart, the Sound of Music, and lots of culture. Salzburg was also the location where I would be meeting my mom! We arrived at the train station and found it to be under construction and VERY confusing. We finally made it to the street side and started walking towards our hotel. We missed it the first time but a man standing outside his Italian restaurant (as they often do) simply pointed to an unmarked door with a smile. We went inside and found my mom! Yay! We left our luggage and went exploring in the old town of Salzburg. It was a very enchanting little town, similar to Germany in culture but much more adorable in every aspect. We went to a castle and ate dessert on a terrace and wandered into shops and a church and a market.
Our second day in Austria was rainy, but we were on a bus for the most part anyways - on the Sound of Music official tour bus! We got to see a lot of the sights from the film, found out that Harvard owns what was the von Trapp house, walked through the church where they were wed, and took pictures in the gardens they ran around in. We found out that all the interior shots were filmed in LA, and also that the front of the von Trapp house and the back are different locations. It was nice to see some of the countryside since we drove to another town to visit the church. We also happened to run into a traditional Austrian wedding in the church, which was very cool! When we got back to Salzburg, the rain had stopped and it turned out to be a beautiful day. We spent the rest of our time soaking up the culture, and we sat on a bench and watched a kid's marathon, a bachelorette party, horse-drawn carriages, and little Austrian children playing in a fountain. That evening we searched out the Augustiner brewery, famous 'round the world! It took us a while, but we hiked up some streets and found the little door, that lead us through a monastery (where there were statues of St. Augustine), down several hallways and finally into a bustling brewery and beer garden. We figured out how it all worked (there were lots of lines and mugs and a water fountain where you clean your mug out for a refill) and we dove right in to the culture. Kelsey and I ended up splitting a roasted chicken, and the man that sold it to us apologized for not speaking good English - he knows Italian best! We were so excited we could finally speak to someone in Italian again, and he was just the cute old Italian man we've been missing!
The next morning we sent Kelsey on her way back to Italy to meet up with her family, and my mom and I headed to France. It was a long train ride, but after 9 hours we arrived in Paris. We made it to mass at Notre Dame, which was really cool, but got kicked out before we could really sight-see much inside. Our time in France was spent on a lot of transportation, which I'm kind of sad about. I was used to walking all over Italy, most of the places we visited were all within walking distance - I had no idea the Eiffel tower was five miles from our Notre Dame, but we walked all five miles along the Seine River until we made it. Found out that Paris is HUGE, and I think I wore my mom out. We were so tired when we got to the tower that we snapped some pics and then searched out any restaurant that was open. We ended up at a Chinese restaurant our first night in Paris. My mom will never admit we ate there, but I stole some chop sticks to prove it.
The next day in Paris I was determined to get to Versailles - didn't realize it was another town. In my own defense, by the time I got to Paris I was so worn out I didn't really care what I did or how much I saw, so my travel skills were a little weak at this point. It took a good couple hours to get there, and when we finally made it to the palace and through the ticket line we spent a ridiculous one to two hours in line waiting to go in. You'd think they were giving away free ice cream or something! It was out of control. Then, when we were about to go in, some AMERICANS were trying to cut in line. Come ON, 'merica! Get it together! That was embarrassing - be polite when you're in another country, that's why the world hates us!
Versailles was probably the biggest let down. I know my mom enjoyed it, but the crowds were unbelievable, you couldn't even breath in some of the rooms, and the gardens were mostly gravel and the fountains weren't even on. In my opinion, it was a real bust. Because we went to Versailles we missed a lot of stuff actually in Paris, like shopping at my new favorite store, Promod, which was in Italy and Spain but is actually a French store. We also missed out on the Luxembourg gardens, which my mom wanted to see real bad. I guess the next time I go to Paris I'll know how to plan better.
I did enjoy shopping in Il St. Louis, an island near Notre Dame. That area had a lot of character and we found a candy shop that we spent a lot of time in. We got "gelato" (hardly as good as Italy's) at a famous place, and then realized the real famous place was a block down the street and considered getting it again, but I told my mom it was way over priced so we walked away, reluctantly.
Our last night in Paris we went to the Eiffel tower at dusk, watched the sun set over the city, and then witnessed the sparkle show from the top level of the tower. We also witnessed a proposal, and the guy must be loaded because he took her to the restaurant in the tower, where meals start at around $100. And that's the lower level restaurant, I don't want to know what the upper level restaurant's prices are! We got shoved around a lot at the top of that windy tower, and when we got to the bottom again we saw the sparkle show from the lawn in front of the tower - we got the best of the tower at all times! We ate "dinner" at 10pm, at a crepe stand across the street from the tower. I wish i would have gone with a chocolate covered fruit crepe, but I stuck with ham and cheese instead and it was decent.
As for our taxi ride home, I don't even want to discuss it the guy was so rude, but the basics include him ripping us off, refusing to speak English, and I got to use my basic French from 7th grade to translate how much of a jerk he was being. We got out of the vehicle and walked the rest of the way home, because, frankly, we were completely out of money and would have had to call for someone to put more money in my account - don't tell my dad.
The next morning we made our way to the airport, got terribly lost and accidentally went through security twice. We finally made it to our terminal and observed a very strange woman (I think mentally challenged but quite the character) decide to change her name on her ticket. They let me on the plane, and my mom was lucky enough to get randomly checked, but they let her on too. I watched the same movie three times because I couldn't sleep with this French woman yelling at her deaf husband behind me. She kept picking on me, poking me when I wasn't wearing my seatbelt, telling me my seat needed to be in the upright position. She did give me my pillow back at one point, waking me up to do it. So, basically, the flight home was a blast. We made it to Chicago, then to Kansas City, was reunited with my #1 man, my dad, and began our trip home to the wonderful Wichita, Kansas.
Wow, I didn't think I'd ever make it to this point in my blog. And if you made it this far too, congrats!! I don't really know what to say now...maybe some inspiring words of growth and newfound wisdom?
Anyways, glad to be back with my friends and family, but still wish I could pick up everyone I love and Manhattan and plop it all in the middle of Tuscany. That'd be the life.
Cara Marie
Prague during the day was great, we toured all over the city - Dan wore us out with all the sight-seeing. My favorite part was climbing to the top of a hill (which was a struggle, Kelsey and I took our time and lost the group a few times) to see the Czech version of the Eiffel Tower. They say the hill counts as the bottom, and it is at the same elevation as the tower in Paris. It was great to run into a beer garden for a quick sausage and PEPSI before going to the top of the tower to get a bird's eye view of Prague. Other things we saw included a palace, a really Gothic church, a baroque church, and lots of little tourist shops featuring Russian dolls, glass sculptures and other trinkets.
We were exhausted by dinner time so we grabbed a bite at a pub (which, I'm sorry to tell you, had an English menu) and went to bed. Kelsey and I lucked out and had our 4-bed room to ourselves the whole time we were in Prague, so we slept wonderfully and had lots of space to spread our luggage out...all over the room. On our last day in Prague we did a little souvenir shopping and then Thomas and Beth met up with Kelsey and I down by the river to go paddle-boating! We got a four person boat, which only two people have to paddle, and Kelsey and I lounged in the back while Beth and Thomas escorted us around the river. It was a very relaxing ride until we ran into some ducks committing homicide on a fellow duck. No joke, there were about six ducks beaking and drowning another duck! I don't know what that duck did, but they chased him out of the water and continued to peck at his head on the shore! I have video, but it's pretty graphic. We completed our wind down by listening to some live music at a outdoor pub on the river's shore we had seen on our paddle boat ride.
Our Prague trip ended that Tuesday morning and Kelsey and I left our travel grouped and ventured to Munich on our own. As we arrived at our hostel and checked in, however, Marissa and Anna Bliss walked through the lobby. They happened to be staying at our same hostel on our same floor for the first two nights we were there! We got moved into our room and cleaned up, and headed to the famous Englischer Garten, which is two times the size of Central Park in New York and jam-packed with beer gardens and active, happy people (probably drunk). We wandered around until we found the most popular beer garden, the Chinese...something. There is a large pagoda surrounded with picnic tables and happy Germans with huge beer mugs. Kelsey and I jumped right into the culture, and got "what she's having." So, we ended up with a huge pint of I-don't-know-what, but it was tasty! Anna and Marissa met us there and helped us finish our drinks so we could get some dinner. We went to Hofbrauhaus for dinner, and I ordered sausage which came in a white ceramic pot soaking in hot water and a side of sweet mustard. It looked disgusting, but was quite tasty! I had a pretzel too, and Kels and I split a beer. The inside of Hofbrauhaus smells like feet and frat house, so if I ever go back to Munich I'm going to stick to the outdoor beer gardens that have wonderful ventilation.
The next day we had a day trip to Fussen, Germany, where the famous "Disney castle" Neuschwanstein is, and another smaller castle, unimportant because it's not a Disney castle. Anna and Marissa had a tour guide, but Kelsey and I took our time wandering through the hillside up to the castle, and avoided all the horse-drawn buggies as best we could because of our Florentine trauma. We made it to the top and took way too many pictures with the beautiful castle. We went inside the gateway and saw the castle up close, and then followed signs that led to a bridge. The bridge was terrifying to walk on, but very worth the effort because of the amazing view of the castle. From the bridge we saw a ski lift to the top of another hill, which I am definitely going to look into the next time I'm in Germany...in my next life.
That evening we found a carnival - Munich's Spring Festival, basically just a reason to have a mini Oktober-fest. There were carnival rides and food stands, but everything seemed oddly quiet. Nobody was on the rides, or walking around, so we kept wandering farther into the carnival until we came to a large tent that had drunk people spilling out and German girls and boys dressed in their traditional outfits rushing in. This was where the party was! We ordered a beer and some food and watched the chaos of people dancing on tables and singing cheers and drinking beerstein after beerstein. It was at this point I wished I was German, real bad. After we had been sitting there a while wishing we knew what was going on, some German boys came up to our table and asked to sit with us, I think. It was so loud in there I thought I just couldn't hear what this boy was saying, but after a good five minutes of saying "What?" and just smiling and laughing, we both realized he was speaking German and I was speaking English. Then we just sat there for a bit and he laughed and said, "Am I really talking English? You understand me?" Ha! I told him he was doing very well, and asked what time the carnival ended. He answered with, "Eleven-and-a-half, twelve."
We left the carnival, not sure why because I was having fun people-watching, but just outside the tent a very confused drunk girl ran away and left her keys on the ground. Understanding how frustrating it is to lose keys, I picked them up and ran after her. I handed them to her and she said, "where did you get these?" She was obviously beyond drunk and I think she thought I stole them. I told her she dropped them and she stood there, very confused, and I told her I was going to walk away now... So I turned around and heard footsteps after me. As I walked back towards the girls they let me know she was following me. When she caught up to me, she said, "what are you doing?" I said I don't know, and she said, "I don't know what I'm doing either." I said, "okay, we're going to leave now....bye..." And she stood there, stared at her keys, looked at me, thanked me, stood there, looked at her keys, and finally walked off again. I hope she made it home, but for some reason I have my doubts.
As we were leaving the carnival a member of our group needed to use the restroom, very badly. She ran ahead of us and went down the excessively long escalator to the subway. She was so far ahead of us that as we stepped onto the escalator to go down, she was approaching the top again because there was no restroom. I evaluated the situation, and decided it would be best to turn around and run up the down escalator. Kelsey looked at me like I was crazy as I told her to turn around and run. She complied, and as I reached the flat part of the escalator and thought it was okay to stop running, I somehow I tripped over Kelsey's feet, landed half on the escalator and half on the ground. I realized that it was pulling half my body down so I scrambled into an army crawl to get off the escalator, and stood up to find Kelsey laughing hysterically at me. Now we were all of a sudden the ones that needed to use the restroom because we were laughing so hard. What an interesting night.
We made it to our hostel safely, and Marissa and Anna left early the next morning. Kelsey and I spent our last day in Germany visiting the Dachau concentration camp, which was an unforgettable experience. Our tour group didn't have time to visit the bookstore which I was bummed about, but I did steal a pebble from the role-call square. That afternoon we visited some shops and did some souvenir searching, finished with a delicious meal and some "apfelstrudle."
Our next destination was Salzburg, Austria, home of Mozart, the Sound of Music, and lots of culture. Salzburg was also the location where I would be meeting my mom! We arrived at the train station and found it to be under construction and VERY confusing. We finally made it to the street side and started walking towards our hotel. We missed it the first time but a man standing outside his Italian restaurant (as they often do) simply pointed to an unmarked door with a smile. We went inside and found my mom! Yay! We left our luggage and went exploring in the old town of Salzburg. It was a very enchanting little town, similar to Germany in culture but much more adorable in every aspect. We went to a castle and ate dessert on a terrace and wandered into shops and a church and a market.
Our second day in Austria was rainy, but we were on a bus for the most part anyways - on the Sound of Music official tour bus! We got to see a lot of the sights from the film, found out that Harvard owns what was the von Trapp house, walked through the church where they were wed, and took pictures in the gardens they ran around in. We found out that all the interior shots were filmed in LA, and also that the front of the von Trapp house and the back are different locations. It was nice to see some of the countryside since we drove to another town to visit the church. We also happened to run into a traditional Austrian wedding in the church, which was very cool! When we got back to Salzburg, the rain had stopped and it turned out to be a beautiful day. We spent the rest of our time soaking up the culture, and we sat on a bench and watched a kid's marathon, a bachelorette party, horse-drawn carriages, and little Austrian children playing in a fountain. That evening we searched out the Augustiner brewery, famous 'round the world! It took us a while, but we hiked up some streets and found the little door, that lead us through a monastery (where there were statues of St. Augustine), down several hallways and finally into a bustling brewery and beer garden. We figured out how it all worked (there were lots of lines and mugs and a water fountain where you clean your mug out for a refill) and we dove right in to the culture. Kelsey and I ended up splitting a roasted chicken, and the man that sold it to us apologized for not speaking good English - he knows Italian best! We were so excited we could finally speak to someone in Italian again, and he was just the cute old Italian man we've been missing!
The next morning we sent Kelsey on her way back to Italy to meet up with her family, and my mom and I headed to France. It was a long train ride, but after 9 hours we arrived in Paris. We made it to mass at Notre Dame, which was really cool, but got kicked out before we could really sight-see much inside. Our time in France was spent on a lot of transportation, which I'm kind of sad about. I was used to walking all over Italy, most of the places we visited were all within walking distance - I had no idea the Eiffel tower was five miles from our Notre Dame, but we walked all five miles along the Seine River until we made it. Found out that Paris is HUGE, and I think I wore my mom out. We were so tired when we got to the tower that we snapped some pics and then searched out any restaurant that was open. We ended up at a Chinese restaurant our first night in Paris. My mom will never admit we ate there, but I stole some chop sticks to prove it.
The next day in Paris I was determined to get to Versailles - didn't realize it was another town. In my own defense, by the time I got to Paris I was so worn out I didn't really care what I did or how much I saw, so my travel skills were a little weak at this point. It took a good couple hours to get there, and when we finally made it to the palace and through the ticket line we spent a ridiculous one to two hours in line waiting to go in. You'd think they were giving away free ice cream or something! It was out of control. Then, when we were about to go in, some AMERICANS were trying to cut in line. Come ON, 'merica! Get it together! That was embarrassing - be polite when you're in another country, that's why the world hates us!
Versailles was probably the biggest let down. I know my mom enjoyed it, but the crowds were unbelievable, you couldn't even breath in some of the rooms, and the gardens were mostly gravel and the fountains weren't even on. In my opinion, it was a real bust. Because we went to Versailles we missed a lot of stuff actually in Paris, like shopping at my new favorite store, Promod, which was in Italy and Spain but is actually a French store. We also missed out on the Luxembourg gardens, which my mom wanted to see real bad. I guess the next time I go to Paris I'll know how to plan better.
I did enjoy shopping in Il St. Louis, an island near Notre Dame. That area had a lot of character and we found a candy shop that we spent a lot of time in. We got "gelato" (hardly as good as Italy's) at a famous place, and then realized the real famous place was a block down the street and considered getting it again, but I told my mom it was way over priced so we walked away, reluctantly.
Our last night in Paris we went to the Eiffel tower at dusk, watched the sun set over the city, and then witnessed the sparkle show from the top level of the tower. We also witnessed a proposal, and the guy must be loaded because he took her to the restaurant in the tower, where meals start at around $100. And that's the lower level restaurant, I don't want to know what the upper level restaurant's prices are! We got shoved around a lot at the top of that windy tower, and when we got to the bottom again we saw the sparkle show from the lawn in front of the tower - we got the best of the tower at all times! We ate "dinner" at 10pm, at a crepe stand across the street from the tower. I wish i would have gone with a chocolate covered fruit crepe, but I stuck with ham and cheese instead and it was decent.
As for our taxi ride home, I don't even want to discuss it the guy was so rude, but the basics include him ripping us off, refusing to speak English, and I got to use my basic French from 7th grade to translate how much of a jerk he was being. We got out of the vehicle and walked the rest of the way home, because, frankly, we were completely out of money and would have had to call for someone to put more money in my account - don't tell my dad.
The next morning we made our way to the airport, got terribly lost and accidentally went through security twice. We finally made it to our terminal and observed a very strange woman (I think mentally challenged but quite the character) decide to change her name on her ticket. They let me on the plane, and my mom was lucky enough to get randomly checked, but they let her on too. I watched the same movie three times because I couldn't sleep with this French woman yelling at her deaf husband behind me. She kept picking on me, poking me when I wasn't wearing my seatbelt, telling me my seat needed to be in the upright position. She did give me my pillow back at one point, waking me up to do it. So, basically, the flight home was a blast. We made it to Chicago, then to Kansas City, was reunited with my #1 man, my dad, and began our trip home to the wonderful Wichita, Kansas.
Wow, I didn't think I'd ever make it to this point in my blog. And if you made it this far too, congrats!! I don't really know what to say now...maybe some inspiring words of growth and newfound wisdom?
Anyways, glad to be back with my friends and family, but still wish I could pick up everyone I love and Manhattan and plop it all in the middle of Tuscany. That'd be the life.
Cara Marie
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Ciao Italy, Gibberish Prague?
This past week flew by, and there's a lot of things I could type about. I'll try and keep it short-ish. On Tuesday, a group of us dragged our luggage down the hill to the train station, ran down stairs and up stairs to get to the right platform, got all our luggage on the train, and then went through the same process when we got to Arezzo where we mailed our extra luggage home. I, unfortunately, still have 65 pounds of luggage in my rolling suitcase and a packed-to-the-brim backpack to carry around.
On Wednesday, we went to Lucca, where there are tons of open and clean piazzas, adorable little shops and more bikes than I've ever seen. That evening the Texas A&M and UTSA students packed up and headed back to the states, so the rest of the week was quiet and peaceful.
After school was all wrapped up, we had a couple nights in Castiglion Fiorentino to celebrate and have one last hoorah. Instead of a going away party, we had a going away carnival. I can't begin to describe how dangerous the rides were and how illegal they should be. The bumper cars are the most fun when they turn on the smoke machines, disco balls and strobe lights. You can't see but a couple feet in front of you and are completely disoriented. Most of the times we did bumper cars there were Italians getting out of the cars running around and jumping from car to car. I always aimed my car towards them. As for the other people on the bumper cars, Americans are playful when they hit you, but the Italians are out for your blood. The last time I played I think I chipped a bone in my knee from it hitting the steering wheel so hard. Two huge Italians, pretty sure they were in their 40s, were packed into one little car, and they kept picking on Marissa and I, the only girls on the track. They would come straight at us as we were passing the edge, and t-bone us into the barrier. This caused our car, time after time, to fly into the air and Marissa was almost ejected from the vehicle on several accounts.
The ride I went on the last night I was in Castig. F.no is called the Super Dance. It is basically a giant disc that has bench seating around the outside (no seatbelts or straps, with minimal railing to hold onto) and is a dance floor in the middle. You're supposed to dance the whole time, standing up, on this spinning disc. There is a man in a booth controlling in, and he has the power to make it go up and down and tilt different ways and at different speeds. This was probably the most ridiculous ride I have ever and will ever see in my life. We had about 15 of us riding on it at one time, but only a few were brave enough to get out of their seats and attempt to dance. I had a blast holding on for my life, especially when the guy would tilt it at a really high angle, then shake it so people would literally be hanging from the top and start sliding across the "dance floor." So unsafe, but so much fun. This is one of the reasons I love Italy. Completely ridiculous.
I packed my suitcases up, took about 50 pictures on my way out of town, and teared up a little when the train to Orvieto crossed from beautiful Tuscany to not-as-beautiful Umbria. We spent the night in Orvieto and then rushed to the train station in the morning to catch our ride to Rome. From Rome we flew to Prague, met up with Dan Rice who is studying here, and have had a personal tour guide all evening. He took us to a brewery outside the tourist part of Prague and we all just pointed at something on the menu because the Czech language is a joke. It's all gibberish and they throw accents on every other letter. I think the creators of The Sims used the Czech language. I'm really excited to start ordering things from just pointing at them and being surprised when I get my plate. I was a little disappointed when I got chicken, potatoes and a salad. I was expecting something as ridiculous as their language. It's Slavic so I have absolutely no understanding of any of it, but Dan tried to explain to me it's like the phoenetic spelling of everything.
Also, their money is Monopoly money. One U.S. dollar is equivalent to SEVENTEEN Czech crowns. This means that $100 is the same as around 1700 Czech crowns. So, everything looks expensive and is really hard to put into perspective. I'm walking around with a 2000 crown bill, and I keep thinking nobody will be able to break it, when really it's only a little over $100. Fake money.
After dinner we saw a couple really cool pubs in town, and I'm excited to see Prague during the day tomorrow.
Happy Mother's Day to the best mom in the whole world!!! And to my wonderful Grandma! And all the mommas reading this!
Love you all!
Cara Marie
On Wednesday, we went to Lucca, where there are tons of open and clean piazzas, adorable little shops and more bikes than I've ever seen. That evening the Texas A&M and UTSA students packed up and headed back to the states, so the rest of the week was quiet and peaceful.
After school was all wrapped up, we had a couple nights in Castiglion Fiorentino to celebrate and have one last hoorah. Instead of a going away party, we had a going away carnival. I can't begin to describe how dangerous the rides were and how illegal they should be. The bumper cars are the most fun when they turn on the smoke machines, disco balls and strobe lights. You can't see but a couple feet in front of you and are completely disoriented. Most of the times we did bumper cars there were Italians getting out of the cars running around and jumping from car to car. I always aimed my car towards them. As for the other people on the bumper cars, Americans are playful when they hit you, but the Italians are out for your blood. The last time I played I think I chipped a bone in my knee from it hitting the steering wheel so hard. Two huge Italians, pretty sure they were in their 40s, were packed into one little car, and they kept picking on Marissa and I, the only girls on the track. They would come straight at us as we were passing the edge, and t-bone us into the barrier. This caused our car, time after time, to fly into the air and Marissa was almost ejected from the vehicle on several accounts.
The ride I went on the last night I was in Castig. F.no is called the Super Dance. It is basically a giant disc that has bench seating around the outside (no seatbelts or straps, with minimal railing to hold onto) and is a dance floor in the middle. You're supposed to dance the whole time, standing up, on this spinning disc. There is a man in a booth controlling in, and he has the power to make it go up and down and tilt different ways and at different speeds. This was probably the most ridiculous ride I have ever and will ever see in my life. We had about 15 of us riding on it at one time, but only a few were brave enough to get out of their seats and attempt to dance. I had a blast holding on for my life, especially when the guy would tilt it at a really high angle, then shake it so people would literally be hanging from the top and start sliding across the "dance floor." So unsafe, but so much fun. This is one of the reasons I love Italy. Completely ridiculous.
I packed my suitcases up, took about 50 pictures on my way out of town, and teared up a little when the train to Orvieto crossed from beautiful Tuscany to not-as-beautiful Umbria. We spent the night in Orvieto and then rushed to the train station in the morning to catch our ride to Rome. From Rome we flew to Prague, met up with Dan Rice who is studying here, and have had a personal tour guide all evening. He took us to a brewery outside the tourist part of Prague and we all just pointed at something on the menu because the Czech language is a joke. It's all gibberish and they throw accents on every other letter. I think the creators of The Sims used the Czech language. I'm really excited to start ordering things from just pointing at them and being surprised when I get my plate. I was a little disappointed when I got chicken, potatoes and a salad. I was expecting something as ridiculous as their language. It's Slavic so I have absolutely no understanding of any of it, but Dan tried to explain to me it's like the phoenetic spelling of everything.
Also, their money is Monopoly money. One U.S. dollar is equivalent to SEVENTEEN Czech crowns. This means that $100 is the same as around 1700 Czech crowns. So, everything looks expensive and is really hard to put into perspective. I'm walking around with a 2000 crown bill, and I keep thinking nobody will be able to break it, when really it's only a little over $100. Fake money.
After dinner we saw a couple really cool pubs in town, and I'm excited to see Prague during the day tomorrow.
Happy Mother's Day to the best mom in the whole world!!! And to my wonderful Grandma! And all the mommas reading this!
Love you all!
Cara Marie
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Catching Up
I've been so busy with studio and being in Italy I haven't been able to write about what I've been doing! After Easter, things got very hectic trying to get all our studio work done. On Tuesday I finished my portion of a book we are making in our seminar class, and then we buckled down for studio presenations on Friday.
On Wednesday (despite the fact that our projects were due in 2 days) we had a field trip to Villa Lante and a Monster Park. Villa Lante was smaller than other villas we've seen, but it was cool to see in person some of the places we studied in history class. After Villa Lante, we had lunch at a small restaurant. It was delicious as usual, and we prepped for the next stop with some endless wine. After lunch we headed to a park about 30 minutes away, that was full of crazy sculptures of giant people, animals, faces and crooked buildings. Most of us climbed on sculptures and got in trouble, but nobody was worse than Geoff Ekey. In one of the giant faces, you can enter the mouth and find a table and seating build into the rock. He climbed up the inside of the face, with the help of Andres, and he came out the eye of the giant. He stood on the cheek of the face for a while, and then the security came over and gave him a dirty look, motioning for him to get down. He turned around and attempted to climb back through the eye, but he couldn't quite maneuver correctly and got stuck for a good few minutes, his legs straddling either side of the eye socket. The whole time he was struggling to get down, the security guard was standing and watching him, just waiting for him to figure it out.
After we all got past impulses to climb every sculpture we saw and jump every barrier we could, we laid under a shade tree until it was time to leave. We got on the bus and headed back to reality. Wednesday night we worked late, and then Thursday we finished things up that day. We had a trip to La Pievuccia, the vineyard that is our project's site, scheduled with the whole school. We tried to finish our book and get it printed in time to show Riccardo, but we were cutting it too close considering the group had already started walking. We decided to have someone else print it for us so we could try and catch up with the group. As we were walking out the front door, we happened to run into Garnett, one of the ladies in the office, and Maggie, the wife of one of our professors. They just-so-happened to be driving to La Pievuccia, since Maggie has trouble walking that far. We lucked out and they offered us a ride! As we pulled up we got dirty looks from everyone.
We toured the site, for the fourth time, and then had an amazing little meal of flower-shaped pizzas and cheese slices with marmelades, and of course lots of different wines. We made orders at the end of the meal of all the products he makes and I got some treats for Eric and my dad. Kelsey and I finished our drawings and process book the night before it was due, which is a first for me.
We presented on Friday to the KSU professors, a professor from Texas A&M, and a grad student from Texas A&M. Other people stopped in to check out how good all our presentations were. We were 8th in line of the non-digital presentations. We had ten minutes to present our proposal and five minutes of feedback. When it was our turn, we pinned up our 12 sheets of drawings and text, handed out two process books of 61 pages each, and flew through our presentation. I don't even remember what we talked about because before we knew it we were getting the 5 minute warning and then the boys in the back were waving at us trying to cut us off. We didn't even cover all our design, and the professors were shocked at how much we developed in our project. I don't know why they ever doubted us, we even told Chip not to worry about us! Clearly they don't know how much b.s. an architecture student can pull out in a week and a half. So basically we were the best project ever.
Friday night was one of the best we've had in Castig F.no. Our teachers planned a dinner for us at a local Argentinan restaurant, La Pompa. It was delicious food, or maybe just food I've missed. There was a sauce we put on bread with salt that tasted like chips and salsa. There was a hot plate they brought out of sizzling meats, including chicken, pork, lamb and STEAK. I think I drooled while eating it. There was an amazing dessert that was like a caramel crepe with ice cream. After we finished dinner and cleaned out their wine cellar, Chip had a slideshow of pictures to show us. They pinned up a sheet to project it onto, and it was a lot of fun seeing everything from the first couple of days to the night before our presentation. We were worried about how long it would be though, because Chip has taken almost 11,000 pictures throughout the semester. He's become the butt of many jokes, mostly from our other professor Jim, about how he hasn't gotten a picture of this rock or that leaf.
They wrapped up the presentation and we all headed to the carnival in town. We had a blast riding the bumper cars, which are extremely dangerous since kids jump in and out of cars and run around while people are driving like crazy. We ran out of tokens and went to a punching bag where one of the boys broke the record, yay! Then we ran into our professors who were looking for a beer garden in town. We went to the other piazza, and found a huge group of Italians and a stage with singers on it. The night couldn't get much better, or so I thought. We slowly made our way in front of the stage where there had been a group of middle-aged women dancing, and completely took over when "Celebrate Good Times" came on. It was pretty funny listening/watching Italians try to sing English songs without knowing the words or what they mean. We were all going crazy, but by the time "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" came on we went completely ballistic and dragged all the boys and our professors out to dance.
We needed hydration after a while, so we got water at Pirate Bar and then the night slowed down as they switched back to Italian songs. On Saturday Kelsey made me go to Florence with her so she could use some of her birthday money, and I got an adorable skirt on sale so I guess it's okay. On Sunday we had planned to go to Rome for the beaitfication, but the train schedules weren't working for us and it was getting too late to figure all the details out of getting to Vatican City. So sad, but mom says we can go back when he becomes a saint and I'm holding her to it! I'll start saving now.
So, today we went to Roggi's, got a pizza and went up to the Etruscan tower to eat it. We walked around town, since there is SO much going on (market, antique stands, food stands, carnival, car show) and slowly made our way back to Santa Chiara. We worked on our history presentation before dinner, and at dinner we heard stories from people that went to the Beatification this weekend, went rafting this weekend, and went to Cinque Terre and met Rick Steves this weekend.
Tonight we plan on going to the carnival to hit up the bumper cars and possible the "Super Dance" which is a round spinning ride where you try and stand in the middle and dance the whole time. When I walked past it Friday night, there are kids stuck against the sides from the centrifugal force, while a few are falling all over the place in the middle. Should be interesting.
Current Events/Breaking News:
Momma Cotter will be making her way to Europe on May 13, meeting Kelsey and I in Salzburg! We will definitely be going on the Sound of Music tour, and then mom and I head to Paris for a few days.
I fly home Wednesday, May 18th, at 11:30am, and I arrive at the KCI Airport at 7:00pm, or something like that.
This week we're just cleaning up studio and our rooms, Tuesday I am shipping half my stuff home (mostly souvenirs) and Friday I move out of Castiglion Fiorentino forever.
I've already packed up half my stuff, and it's still unreal that I'm almost done with the semester. Can't wait to see Rome, Prague, Munich, Salzburg and Paris, and can't wait to be home, but I'm going to miss this place.
Cara Marie
On Wednesday (despite the fact that our projects were due in 2 days) we had a field trip to Villa Lante and a Monster Park. Villa Lante was smaller than other villas we've seen, but it was cool to see in person some of the places we studied in history class. After Villa Lante, we had lunch at a small restaurant. It was delicious as usual, and we prepped for the next stop with some endless wine. After lunch we headed to a park about 30 minutes away, that was full of crazy sculptures of giant people, animals, faces and crooked buildings. Most of us climbed on sculptures and got in trouble, but nobody was worse than Geoff Ekey. In one of the giant faces, you can enter the mouth and find a table and seating build into the rock. He climbed up the inside of the face, with the help of Andres, and he came out the eye of the giant. He stood on the cheek of the face for a while, and then the security came over and gave him a dirty look, motioning for him to get down. He turned around and attempted to climb back through the eye, but he couldn't quite maneuver correctly and got stuck for a good few minutes, his legs straddling either side of the eye socket. The whole time he was struggling to get down, the security guard was standing and watching him, just waiting for him to figure it out.
After we all got past impulses to climb every sculpture we saw and jump every barrier we could, we laid under a shade tree until it was time to leave. We got on the bus and headed back to reality. Wednesday night we worked late, and then Thursday we finished things up that day. We had a trip to La Pievuccia, the vineyard that is our project's site, scheduled with the whole school. We tried to finish our book and get it printed in time to show Riccardo, but we were cutting it too close considering the group had already started walking. We decided to have someone else print it for us so we could try and catch up with the group. As we were walking out the front door, we happened to run into Garnett, one of the ladies in the office, and Maggie, the wife of one of our professors. They just-so-happened to be driving to La Pievuccia, since Maggie has trouble walking that far. We lucked out and they offered us a ride! As we pulled up we got dirty looks from everyone.
We toured the site, for the fourth time, and then had an amazing little meal of flower-shaped pizzas and cheese slices with marmelades, and of course lots of different wines. We made orders at the end of the meal of all the products he makes and I got some treats for Eric and my dad. Kelsey and I finished our drawings and process book the night before it was due, which is a first for me.
We presented on Friday to the KSU professors, a professor from Texas A&M, and a grad student from Texas A&M. Other people stopped in to check out how good all our presentations were. We were 8th in line of the non-digital presentations. We had ten minutes to present our proposal and five minutes of feedback. When it was our turn, we pinned up our 12 sheets of drawings and text, handed out two process books of 61 pages each, and flew through our presentation. I don't even remember what we talked about because before we knew it we were getting the 5 minute warning and then the boys in the back were waving at us trying to cut us off. We didn't even cover all our design, and the professors were shocked at how much we developed in our project. I don't know why they ever doubted us, we even told Chip not to worry about us! Clearly they don't know how much b.s. an architecture student can pull out in a week and a half. So basically we were the best project ever.
Friday night was one of the best we've had in Castig F.no. Our teachers planned a dinner for us at a local Argentinan restaurant, La Pompa. It was delicious food, or maybe just food I've missed. There was a sauce we put on bread with salt that tasted like chips and salsa. There was a hot plate they brought out of sizzling meats, including chicken, pork, lamb and STEAK. I think I drooled while eating it. There was an amazing dessert that was like a caramel crepe with ice cream. After we finished dinner and cleaned out their wine cellar, Chip had a slideshow of pictures to show us. They pinned up a sheet to project it onto, and it was a lot of fun seeing everything from the first couple of days to the night before our presentation. We were worried about how long it would be though, because Chip has taken almost 11,000 pictures throughout the semester. He's become the butt of many jokes, mostly from our other professor Jim, about how he hasn't gotten a picture of this rock or that leaf.
They wrapped up the presentation and we all headed to the carnival in town. We had a blast riding the bumper cars, which are extremely dangerous since kids jump in and out of cars and run around while people are driving like crazy. We ran out of tokens and went to a punching bag where one of the boys broke the record, yay! Then we ran into our professors who were looking for a beer garden in town. We went to the other piazza, and found a huge group of Italians and a stage with singers on it. The night couldn't get much better, or so I thought. We slowly made our way in front of the stage where there had been a group of middle-aged women dancing, and completely took over when "Celebrate Good Times" came on. It was pretty funny listening/watching Italians try to sing English songs without knowing the words or what they mean. We were all going crazy, but by the time "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" came on we went completely ballistic and dragged all the boys and our professors out to dance.
We needed hydration after a while, so we got water at Pirate Bar and then the night slowed down as they switched back to Italian songs. On Saturday Kelsey made me go to Florence with her so she could use some of her birthday money, and I got an adorable skirt on sale so I guess it's okay. On Sunday we had planned to go to Rome for the beaitfication, but the train schedules weren't working for us and it was getting too late to figure all the details out of getting to Vatican City. So sad, but mom says we can go back when he becomes a saint and I'm holding her to it! I'll start saving now.
So, today we went to Roggi's, got a pizza and went up to the Etruscan tower to eat it. We walked around town, since there is SO much going on (market, antique stands, food stands, carnival, car show) and slowly made our way back to Santa Chiara. We worked on our history presentation before dinner, and at dinner we heard stories from people that went to the Beatification this weekend, went rafting this weekend, and went to Cinque Terre and met Rick Steves this weekend.
Tonight we plan on going to the carnival to hit up the bumper cars and possible the "Super Dance" which is a round spinning ride where you try and stand in the middle and dance the whole time. When I walked past it Friday night, there are kids stuck against the sides from the centrifugal force, while a few are falling all over the place in the middle. Should be interesting.
Current Events/Breaking News:
Momma Cotter will be making her way to Europe on May 13, meeting Kelsey and I in Salzburg! We will definitely be going on the Sound of Music tour, and then mom and I head to Paris for a few days.
I fly home Wednesday, May 18th, at 11:30am, and I arrive at the KCI Airport at 7:00pm, or something like that.
This week we're just cleaning up studio and our rooms, Tuesday I am shipping half my stuff home (mostly souvenirs) and Friday I move out of Castiglion Fiorentino forever.
I've already packed up half my stuff, and it's still unreal that I'm almost done with the semester. Can't wait to see Rome, Prague, Munich, Salzburg and Paris, and can't wait to be home, but I'm going to miss this place.
Cara Marie
Monday, April 25, 2011
Easter Celebrations
Well I told you about the Easter Mass at midnight, but that was just the beginning of the Easter celebrations in town! On Easter morning, we went to Roggi's to get lunch because it was the only place open. They were really busy preparing their Easter feast which some people sat down for. We just got our pizza and went back to studio. Kelsey and I worked hard all day on seminar drawings and studio progress, and before we knew it it was dinner time.
For dinner, one of the cooks gave up time with her family to make us a real Easter meal. They brought out all the courses at once, and the menu included:
Ham! with a pineapple-bacon bits sauce on it
Peas, which are always delicious here
Roast beef, more cooked than usual
MASHED potatoes
Salad
Hard boiled eggs
And for dessert they had some sort of almond cake with cups of strawberries and bananas, which we poured over the cake. I was so happy that we had ham and potatoes, my favorites! Only think it was lacking was some warm butterhorn rolls smothered in more butter.
The rest of Easter we spent in studio, and that night before bed Kelsey and I, for the first time, did our Lenten workout. Better late than never, right? We did lunges down the hall, but could hardly stand up because we were laughing at ourselves so hard. We also did wall push-ups and leg lifts, and Kelsey started using the punch-balloons my mom sent as an arm workout until I convinced her 1:30am was probably to late to be making that much noise.
On Easter Monday we had planned to wake up early and work in studio, and at 11:30 we rolled out of bed to get ready by lunch time. Easter Monday is a national holiday in Italy, so we didn't have cooks to make a two course meal for once. We got handed sack lunches, and I honestly questioned when we would be getting the second-course sack. Lunch was a piece of bread and some meat, a piece of fruit, a candy bar and a juice box (which I have banned myself from drinking). Most people went and got a pizza, but I toughed it out until I decided to finish my Ritz crackers and nutella.
While we were working in studio this afternoon, I started hearing music outside our window. I ran upstairs to see what the commotion was, and I got to the front door just in time to see the Jesus statue going back into the church. I'm assuming they took it out when the bells started going off (and continued going off every 30 minutes) and paraded around town and back again. The band went by, followed by the whole town, and they all marched into the church. I went back to studio, but right after that Andres came in and said they were having Mass outside. Then we started hearing either firecrackers or a massacre coming from the church. Easter Monday is a party too! Firecrackers and even 3 canon shots went off for a good while, and then we went back to work on our projects.
America could learn a thing or two from Italy, like how to throw a party for Jesus. Still working on studio, being a good little student and making up for the lack of work I did all semester! I can't believe there's only 12 days left of school at Santa Chiara and then only another week and a half until I'm back in the states. These next weeks are going to fly by, and then it's back to Kraft mac'n'cheese, Wal-Mart and consistent store hours. And, how could I forget, my Auntie Anne's pretzel I'm getting the second I set foot in the Chicago airport!
Cara Marie
For dinner, one of the cooks gave up time with her family to make us a real Easter meal. They brought out all the courses at once, and the menu included:
Ham! with a pineapple-bacon bits sauce on it
Peas, which are always delicious here
Roast beef, more cooked than usual
MASHED potatoes
Salad
Hard boiled eggs
And for dessert they had some sort of almond cake with cups of strawberries and bananas, which we poured over the cake. I was so happy that we had ham and potatoes, my favorites! Only think it was lacking was some warm butterhorn rolls smothered in more butter.
The rest of Easter we spent in studio, and that night before bed Kelsey and I, for the first time, did our Lenten workout. Better late than never, right? We did lunges down the hall, but could hardly stand up because we were laughing at ourselves so hard. We also did wall push-ups and leg lifts, and Kelsey started using the punch-balloons my mom sent as an arm workout until I convinced her 1:30am was probably to late to be making that much noise.
On Easter Monday we had planned to wake up early and work in studio, and at 11:30 we rolled out of bed to get ready by lunch time. Easter Monday is a national holiday in Italy, so we didn't have cooks to make a two course meal for once. We got handed sack lunches, and I honestly questioned when we would be getting the second-course sack. Lunch was a piece of bread and some meat, a piece of fruit, a candy bar and a juice box (which I have banned myself from drinking). Most people went and got a pizza, but I toughed it out until I decided to finish my Ritz crackers and nutella.
While we were working in studio this afternoon, I started hearing music outside our window. I ran upstairs to see what the commotion was, and I got to the front door just in time to see the Jesus statue going back into the church. I'm assuming they took it out when the bells started going off (and continued going off every 30 minutes) and paraded around town and back again. The band went by, followed by the whole town, and they all marched into the church. I went back to studio, but right after that Andres came in and said they were having Mass outside. Then we started hearing either firecrackers or a massacre coming from the church. Easter Monday is a party too! Firecrackers and even 3 canon shots went off for a good while, and then we went back to work on our projects.
America could learn a thing or two from Italy, like how to throw a party for Jesus. Still working on studio, being a good little student and making up for the lack of work I did all semester! I can't believe there's only 12 days left of school at Santa Chiara and then only another week and a half until I'm back in the states. These next weeks are going to fly by, and then it's back to Kraft mac'n'cheese, Wal-Mart and consistent store hours. And, how could I forget, my Auntie Anne's pretzel I'm getting the second I set foot in the Chicago airport!
Cara Marie
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Easter Weekend
Happy Easter Weekend! Tonight is the Easter Vigil, where they have the last procession for the week. At the end of the procession, they rush into the church with a statue of the risen Jesus and there are fireworks and loud noises and a dove is released! Should be a party!!
Besides being super excited for tonight's festivities, I've been working very hard on studio, surprisingly enough. I've gone back to first year techniques of hand drawing, and successfully done the base work for 12 different sheets, including plans, elevations, sections and perspectives. Kelsey then transfers them to the final sheets and adds all the details and makes them pretty. It's a great team effort. After we get all our sheets finished, Kelsey will be watercoloring while I am writing all the text for descriptions of diagrams and designs.
It's amazing how productive you can be when Italy is outside your studio window. I am proud to say we've spent a total of about 12 days actually working on studio this semester, and it's my favorite project yet - the biggest and the most detailed one, too.
I'll post pictures of my progress so you can see it's not just vacation time over here. I'm going to be missing ham and cheesy potatoes tomorrow, so everyone better have two helpings of each for me. Also the green jello stuff.
Love everyone! See you at my welcoming party in 26 days! :-)
Cara Marie
Besides being super excited for tonight's festivities, I've been working very hard on studio, surprisingly enough. I've gone back to first year techniques of hand drawing, and successfully done the base work for 12 different sheets, including plans, elevations, sections and perspectives. Kelsey then transfers them to the final sheets and adds all the details and makes them pretty. It's a great team effort. After we get all our sheets finished, Kelsey will be watercoloring while I am writing all the text for descriptions of diagrams and designs.
It's amazing how productive you can be when Italy is outside your studio window. I am proud to say we've spent a total of about 12 days actually working on studio this semester, and it's my favorite project yet - the biggest and the most detailed one, too.
I'll post pictures of my progress so you can see it's not just vacation time over here. I'm going to be missing ham and cheesy potatoes tomorrow, so everyone better have two helpings of each for me. Also the green jello stuff.
Love everyone! See you at my welcoming party in 26 days! :-)
Cara Marie
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Tivoli
Today we ventured south to Tivoli, just outside Rome. We arrived at Hadrian’s Villa 45 minutes early, which we were all thrilled about since we got up so early. Our tour guide showed us a model of what Hadrian’s Villa would have looked like, and I was amazed at how large it was! We saw lots of ruins of loggias and baths and theaters, and also saw all the places Emperor Hadrian would have roamed around for “refreshing walks,” as our tour guide mentioned multiple times. We saw his private swimming pool, and the famous reflection pool he built for his secret male lover, which we were all disappointed our tour guide did NOT bring up. Thank goodness for Mick Charney.
After Hadrian’s Villa we had a picnic lunch by the buses in the parking lot. A little ghetto, but it was nice that we had sandwiches, chips and cookies provided for us so we didn’t go hungry. Next stop was Villa d’Este. We drove into the town of Tivoli, which I would describe as half sketch and half happenin’. The bus dropped us off on a main street, and we walked the rest of the way to the villa, by-passing some tourist stores filled with inappropriate undies and aprons that had the statue David strategically printed on them.
We toured the house first, but our tour guide couldn’t keep us inside very long. There is a vast amount of gardens behind the house, with tons of beautiful fountains around every corner. We were so distracted by all the beautiful flowers, gardens, fountains and pools that we kept losing our group. On the plus side I now have lots of potential new profile pictures.
You will be happy to know I have some more words that Italians can’t pronounce.
Olive: alive
Vehicle: vee-HIGH-cull
Buried: bury-ed (pronounce every syllable)
Statue: stay-chew
I apologize for not having a spill of the day in a while, but hopefully this will make up for it:
While we were waiting to see part of Hadrian’s Villa, I was looking at a brick wall that was once covered in marble. After standing 25 feet tall for almost 2000 years, you can imagine the state the wall was in - pieces of brick crumbling away, some bricks sticking out while other areas were hollowing out. I touched some of the bricks, and not realizing everyone was watching me, I tested how strong the wall was. I thought the brick was still stuck in there pretty well, so I let go of it and my teacher goes, “if you pull that brick out, the whole wall is going to fall down.” I laughed and jokingly turned around and acted out an exaggerated tug at the brick. To my surprise it crumbled in my hand and a huge chunk of the brick fell to the ground. Everyone made the situation worse by gasping at what had happened, and I turned around embarrassed because I had broken an ancient wall. My teacher told me he thinks the wall will survive, and then made me feel better by saying that part of the brick hadn’t seen sun for a couple thousand years. So, in the end I freed a brick at the cost of breaking Hadrian’s Villa.
Tonight is another procession, should be similar to last night’s but I’ll update you if anything excited happens like someone’s robe catches on fire. There actually was a close call last night…
Cara Marie
Holy Week
Tonight began the first procession in town for Holy Week. My town is one of three in Italy that still does the processions throughout town. A man came to Santa Chiara before dinner tonight to try and explain what goes on. He taught us about the history of the brotherhoods, how they wear different colored robes (that look like the KKK), and they used to turn all the lights out in town and only the light of the candles they hold led their way. The processions each have a different statue of Jesus carried by the robed people, tonight being one representing the betrayal of Jesus by Judas. They began at San Francesco, the church on the other side of town, and walked down the Corso (the Main Street of Italy) and then looped around the piazza by Santa Chiara and headed back to San Francesco.
We had a front row view of the procession, and it was very interesting to watch. It was led by men in white robes holding a cross, then men in black robes with another cross, and then men in blue with their own cross. Those were the three brotherhoods – like the Italian frats. At the back were men in white robes holding the statue of Jesus. They processed through the lines of robed people and went into the church. Behind the statue was a band playing some melancholy music to set the mood. Then they all waited for the statue to come back out of the church and head back to San Francesco.
I can’t wait to see what the rest of the week brings – at midnight on Saturday/Sunday they rush into the church with a statue of the risen Jesus and there are fireworks and loud noises and they release a dove that represents Christ’s rising.
Tomorrow we have a 6:45am bus to Tivoli to see Hadrian’s Villa and Villa d’Este. So NOT pumped for that early morning…but maybe another beautiful day full of gardens!
Cara Marie
Cinque Terre
This weekend we traveled to the Cinque Terre (Five Towns), northwest of Pisa. It was a girl trip, and was so peaceful without boys trying to run everything! Kelsey, Marissa and I left on Friday morning and met up with Rachel and Jordan in La Spezia. We took a short train ride and arrived in Riomaggiore, our home for the weekend. We walked through a tunnel that had mosaics all the way to the other side, made from random recycled tiles, stones and rocks. On the other side we found quaint little shops and markets with a hill into the heart of the town. It was pretty clear that we, the Castiglion residents, that is, have been through hill town boot camp. Rachel (from Orvieto) was huffing and puffing all the way up that hill. We found the reception for the apartment we rented, and the woman at the desk kept calling me “love” and cursed like a sailor, “bloody hell!”
After we signed our lives away she led us up stairs and down an alley to a door that she pulled on some twine to open. At this point we had no idea what we’re getting ourselves into. We followed her through the door and went down a few steps in which the rise was as tall as the run was wide. After struggling down about 5 steps, we turned a corner to a straight run of stairs, four flights down, each a foot high. As I began to take each step one at a time, I saw my life flash before me and I envisioned myself slipping on the marble step and tumbling down the entire staircase. We only had to go down one flight to reach our destination, and I carefully let go of the handrail and slid into the apartment quickly.
The apartment we rented for the weekend was awesome. There was a foyer, a huge bathroom, two bedrooms, a living room and a full kitchen. There was even a balcony that overlooked the Riomaggiore marina and Mediterranean Sea. After we dropped off our backpacks and got comfortable, we braved the stairs and slowly walked all the way down to the level of the marina. The other apartments on the staircase were being renovated to we were the only ones in the building and we basically had a private door to the seaside for the weekend! We walked to the water and began climbing on some huge rocks, all the way to the edge of the rock pier. I got my toes wet in the Mediterranean, and we relaxed and caught up with the other girls.
After a while we headed back to land and searched out a market for supplies to make dinner. We decided on chicken, pasta and veggies. Back at the apartment, I was in charge of the pasta and white sauce. We didn’t have all the ingredients so it turned out to be just a milky-yet-slightly-chunky parmesan cheese “sauce.” We sat at the table and talked and drank wine for a long time, then we made the mistake of moving to the comfy seats in the living room. Everyone started falling asleep, Marissa did go to sleep, and at 11pm I went with Jordan to pick up her sister, who has been studying in Spain and is now on her spring break. We stayed up with Mackenzie for a while, and then went to sleep for a beach day in the morning!
I fell asleep to the sound of waves crashing on the rocks, and in the morning we had scrambled eggs with veggies. We packed our beach bags and slowly made our way to the Via Dell’Amore, which is the first hike between Riomaggiore and Manarola. It was about a 20-30 minute walk between the towns, and beautiful scenery the whole way. The Via Dell’Amore is a flat path built on the side of the cliffs, and there are love locks all over this stroll. Instead of fining people for putting locks on public property like they do in Florence, Cinque Terre has gotten smart and actually sells padlocks in the gift store. There are lots of places to stop and admire the sea, or partake in some PDA, along the way. There are also a lot of stairs built into the cliffs that lead to larger rocks in the water. We climbed down and explored a bit on a couple of these, then kept making our way to Manarola.
When we arrived in Manarola we shopped around town a bit and got a snack for lunch. We sat on a boat entry to the water and soaked up some sun before we headed to the train station to go to Monterosso. Right when we got off the train we walked across the street to the pebble beach. We picked a spot and set up camp. Unfortunately we picked a spot next to the most obnoxious American ever, a girl who was wearing way too little clothing and showing off way too much of her body. She kept yelling (not talking) about herself and smoking and drinking and how she’s really cool. Ohh geez – Americans!
After turning down some African beads and “massagee’s” we got some slushie drinks at a bar and strolled to see what else was in the town. We found a happenin’ square with a church about to have Mass. There were lots of little souvenir shops and boutiques. After indulging in some cheap souvenirs, we went back to the train station to go to the next town over, Vernazza. We got on the wrong train, however, and went all the way back to Riomaggiore. We tried to go the other way back, but apparently our tickets weren’t valid anymore and we got kicked off the train in Manarola. It all worked out in the end, though, because after we couldn’t find a restaurant to eat at in Manarola (ALL were full ALL night), we took the Via Dell’Amore at sunset and had the most romantic walk back, just us girls. [Side note: trains in the Cinque Terre run anywhere from 10-45 minutes late, but at least they’re consistent with one thing.]
In Riomaggiore we searched for a special place to eat for Kelsey’s birthday dinner, and ironically ended up at the restaurant below our balcony. After waiting an hour we were seated and I split lobster pasta with Marissa. It was very difficult to eat, since we didn’t have the things to crack the shell. I had to get my hands dirty and do a bit of surgery to get the meat out, but it was tasty! The restaurant gave Kelsey a delicious chocolate cake that was more like fudge, and we helped her finish it. After we were done, I took some pictures with the head of the crab, complete with eyeballs, and then we went back up our mountain of stairs to our apartment.
On Sunday we cleaned dishes and packed our stuff, and then checked out and stored our luggage for the day. We finally successfully made it to Vernazza, where we had pizza by the water and shopped. We found a store that said “original art and design” on the outside, so we went in to check it out. They had acrylic paintings of all the different cities and different views in Cinque Terre. We found some jewelry at the back that you could pick different charms and choose your chain and how you want it made. We talked to the woman making the jewelry, and her husband happened to study architecture in Florence. He’s the artist now (obviously didn’t do architecture) and she makes custom jewelry. We hadn’t seen anything like this, so we all picked out charms and had necklaces and bracelets made. I have one of the paintings of Cinque Terre on one of my charms, and the painting Venus Rising on the other, because it’s in my room in Santa Chiara and I wake up to it every day.
After rushing back to Riomaggiore to get our luggage, we waited for the train for a while and then began our trip home. In school it’s crunch time, and Kelsey and I are working very hard and making lots of progress on our awesome project! I’ll upload pictures eventually, to prove this isn’t just a vacation.
Tonight before dinner we have someone coming to talk to us about the Holy Week ceremonies that will be happening in town this week. I am so excited to learn about this and see everything they do. The first ceremony is tonight at 9:15pm and lasts about an hour. It should be very interesting!
On another side note, there is the most adorable little toddler with us in Santa Chiara. Her name is Ruby and she is the daughter of the Texas A&M architecture professor. She has learned to walk and is running all over the study center. She will waddle down the halls and stop to look at everything along the way. One of her first words is “statue” because all the halls are filled with artwork from previous students and she loves to stop and touch it. She also loves playing with the turtles that live in our courtyard, and she is always looking for them and poking them. Most adorable girl ever, AND she never cries. I might pack her in my suitcase instead of my clothes.
Cara Marie
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Academia and Planetarium
Today was the last day I visit Florence for the semester. We went to the market before our tour of the Academia, and I bought some last minute souvenirs. As usually, we showed up to our meeting spot a little late, and once again track coach Chip came out and told us to run to the Academia. We’ve learned our lesson when it comes to running with Chip, so we strolled there just in time to be let in (VIP style since we had an appointment). To make up for being a little late, I was the first one with a headset on ready for our tour. The Academia was much smaller than I expected. Usually our tour guides send us up three flights of stairs and then we have to hike all over the huge museums to be told just a couple facts about a few pieces of art. The Academia had about four or five rooms, each of reasonable size. The first room had one sculpture and paintings around the walls. There was a room of music, with instruments from famous string quintets such as the Medici’s. There was the first piano, and other variations like a piano-violin, and different techniques for the piano, such as strumming the strings versus a hammer and upright strings versus lying flat.
We went to the next room where there were Michaelangelo pieces that were unfinished. Our tour guide began talking about the first piece, and I was paying attention so intently that it took me a while before I turned to my left and saw the big guy – David. He is HUGE! Eighteen feet tall, I was told, and beautiful! There was so much thought put into the sculpture, and meaning behind every detail. And Michaelangelo was only 26 when he did this?! Ridiculous.
After staring at David for a while, we saw some plaster statues and other paintings and then our tour was over. Shortest tour ever. We waited in the lobby while our teachers discussed plans and got directions for where our next stop was, and eventually got kicked out by the lady hushing at us constantly. We decided that the mean Florentines get sent to the Academia. Mean Romans get sent to the Sistine Chapel. “Shhhh! NO PHOTO!”
We had kebabs for lunch and then the girls and I did some shopping at leather stores and trinket shops. We met with Giovanni, our history teacher, and walked to the Planetarium. We got let in the back door, because this is a private museum for the Science and Technology Engineering School in Florence. Giovanni is one of the directors for the museums in Florence, so he has hook ups all over the place. We entered the museum, which was very small but packed with everything from mastodon teeth to the first hydraulic machines. We split into two groups and my group went to the theater first.
I don’t know whose idea it was to put college students (that stay up too late and get up excessively early to travel, shop, tour and eat) in an IMAX-like theater with reclining seats, but I was very happy in that room. Giovanni talked to us for a while about what we would be learning, and then another man came in and taught us a bit of history on astronomy and constellations. After he had talked for a while, and some of us were already getting drowsy, he turned the lights off and projected stars above us. Hello nap time! I tried to pay attention but his Italian accent turned into white noise and the stars were so mesmerizing, like I was being put to sleep by a hypnotist. I think he knew we were all struggling a bit, even though you couldn’t see your own hands in that room, because every once in a while he would raise his voice or stomp his feet and I woke up at some point, very refreshed. I stayed awake the rest of the time and learned about some constellations, the North Star, lunar eclipses, and then he made the sun rise and we all had to wake up. For the record, I was not the one that snored two separate times during his presentation. Next we moved on to the collection of lots of engineering stuff.
We gathered in a small hallway that was lined with display cabinets on either side, packed to the brim with lots of machines I didn’t recognize one bit. (The only things in the entire museum I recognized were the mercury thermometers and some car batteries). I was shocked at the amount of pieces on display in this tiny museum – easily over 3,000 items! There were mechanical machines, electricity measuring tools, electromagnetic machines, hydraulic machines, a room of acoustic instruments, and an anatomy room – basically anything in the history of engineering you can think of was in this museum. I told Giovanni my dad was an electrical engineer, and he said that I should definitely bring him here and he will get us into the museum. Guess you have to come to Italy, dad!! Giovanni will hook us up! (He also told our class that we are family now and we can go to the Galileo Museum whenever we want. Apparently in the past he has let people into the museum the day his child was being born. Just straight up left the hospital!)
We quickly walked through the display cabinets to a room where we learned some history on the battery and the first communication devices. Then it was time for some experiments! We created a battery out of zinc and copper washers, stacked with salt-water soaked clothes in between, and we made a light illuminate! Yay, I’m a scientist! We also messed with a compass and magnetism, and then did some Morse code. We had to rush through our lesson because we were an hour behind and had already missed our train to make it back for dinner. (Luckily they held dinner until we got back).
The dean of our college is in town now, so tomorrow we have to impress him all day. We even get to skip our Seminar class in order to have more studio time. So excited for 7 hours of studio tomorrow. Then on Friday we leave for the beaches of Cinque Terre to celebrate Kelsey’s 22nd birthday!! Hooray!
Cara Marie
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Catching Up.
I haven’t written in a while, mostly due to how much time I’ve been spending outside. We’ve had ridiculously nice weather, making the productivity in studio non-existent. We did, however, have a critique last Thursday, so Kelsey and I spent a few days being super productive so we could still get our outside time. We have designed a gateway for the vineyard, a path and a new outdoor wine tasting. We have research and materials and floor plans and elevations and all sorts of good studio progress. Our teacher even told us we were ahead of a lot of people. Hoorah!
There are just a couple things I need to write about, like how I hiked to a castle across the valley, toured Pienza and Montepulciano, had an amazing lunch, had a lake day, and went to the Pitti Palace and Boboli Gardens in Florence. The hike to the castle deserves its own post, so I’ll start with Montepulciano and Pienza.
These two towns were scheduled on the same day, and we traveled in between the two. In the morning we stopped at a really big church, where we didn’t have a tour guide. Our teachers knew nothing about it, so for the next stop we found a last minute tour guide. At the big church we took lots of pictures and wandered around clueless. It was pretty cool because it was in an open field rather than crammed into a city or town.
The next stop was Pienza. This was where we found a last-second tour guide that did nothing more than show us around town. She used the words “beautiful” and “amazing” a lot, and really just talked about where different things were in town and told us a few facts – none that involve real architectural information. I’m convinced she wiki’d her own town and just memorized what it said. She did, however, take us to the side of the church where there is a big crack from it being built on an unstable piece of land and bullet holes from the war.
After our tour of the town, we went into what we think was a palace, but with the lack of knowledge from our professors we’ll never be too sure. We saw lots of artwork and different rooms from some family that was like the Medici’s of the Siena area. If you see a crest with 5 half-moons, it’s that family that I can’t remember the name of, and they stand for how many crusades they’ve been a part of. We also saw a garden, the first renaissance garden I’ve seen. It had all the hedgerows in geometrical patterns and overlooked the valley.
After building up our appetites walking around town, we went as a group to a restaurant where lunch was served, and the waiters just kept the food coming. They served appetizers, lasagna, pasta, sausage, roast beef, ham, and tiramisu. Best lasagna I’ve ever had. If we could have merged the food from Pienza and everything else from the best day of my life, it would have created the most ultimate day in the history of days.
In Montepulciano, we saw where the second Twiglight movie was filmed, and learned that almost everything was set up. There wasn’t even a fountain for Bella to run through – it was all built the day they filmed and taken down a couple days later! We also saw the wine cellar for the city. They call it the second cathedral of the town – in other words they worship God first, and then wine. The wine cellar had humongous barrels and was really creepy, perfect for the filming of Twilight. We toured it, learned some history, and then were sent to the gift shop. That concluded our day and we headed back to Castiglion Fiorentino.
Next was the lake day. On Friday my roomies and I had decided that we wanted to go to the lake between Castiglion and Orvieto, that other people had gone to the previous weekend. At lunch we told some people about it, and they liked the idea, so the group kept growing and growing. Some of the boys looked at the train times and found that there were trains at 1:30, 2:00 or 2:30. We knew we were going to take our time eating lunch, packing and walking to the train station, so we were taking the 2:30 train. The boys, needing to get the most time in every aspect of travel in Italy, skipped fruit and ran to the train station. We’re clearly smarter because I got two oranges and an apple, and had a nice stroll down to the train station, rather than a sprint.
When we arrived at the stop where the lake was, we had to walk through the town a bit to get to the beach. There was a lot of cute B&Bs, parks, shops and a marina. We walked along the shore until we found a beach with a bar, volleyball court, gelateria, pool, and our friends. We relaxed all afternoon, stepped in the water but didn’t stay long, some people swam in the freezing water, saw a guy wind surfing, saw the wind surfer wipe out, and got gelato to top the day off. Some people played ultimate Frisbee, and Jake cut his foot really bad. He hobbled all around until I got him the first aid kit my mom made me. It finally got put to use for something more than sore feet. While going through all the stuff in the kit I realized I could probably perform surgery if it’s needed.
Saturday brought a last minute decision to go to Florence and see the Pitti Palace and Boboli Gardens. Hooray for Italian Culture Week, because entry was free to both the gardens and the palace! A goal for the day was to find the sculpture of a naked fat man on a turtle. The man was the favorite jester of the Medici family. We hiked through the gardens and saw lots of plants and fountains and pretty scenery of Florence. We found lots of secret corners and hidden gardens where the Medici’s could have had secret rendezvous. We visited an exhibit they currently have of a Pompeian garden, funny seeing that after seeing the real thing. After seeing the gardens, we went to the Pitti Palace and toured the Palatine Museum and an exhibit of costumes. The costumes exhibit had clothes from the 1800s as well as modern interpretations of each of the old ones. They also had fun retro clothing and accessories on display. We skipped the modern art exhibit and met with some people to head back to the train station.
That’s all for now because it’s dinner time, next up is the hike to the castle and a blurb on the vehicles of Italy.
Cara Marie
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Soccer Match
We went to Orvieto Saturday morning with the hopes of putting up a fight at the Castiglion F.no – Orvieto soccer match. It was sunny and warm with just a slight breeze, another beautiful day in Italy. The boys (and Diana) warmed up for the game while the rest of the cheering section got a bite to eat and bought some oranges for the boys (and Diana) for half time. The people not playing just chatted on the side lines and soaked up the sun – I can now wear shorts without blinding everyone in sight! Our teachers came with us – Chip kept the time and took video of the game, while Jim and Maggie felt like the parental support. As for the result of the game, well, we at least made it on the score board. After the game the athletic ones formed a little tournament and played around for another hour or so, and we just hung out outside as much as we could.
After a siesta during the afternoon we freshened up and went to Pizzeria Charlie’s for dinner. They had a table set up for us outside, with 43 seats in the shape of a giant L. The waiter went around the entire table, and when he got to the end he joked, “Now my job is done!” My pizza was delicious and afterwards we went to the girl’s house and made some Sangria. The whole bunch of us that were in town gathered there for a while, before going to Beer House, where we were greeted with the entire Green Day album.
The next morning the girls made us French toast and fruit salad – yum! Then we walked to the soccer field and laid in the sun some more. We caught the 2:00 train home, and have been catching up on editing pictures and blogging since then. All this nice weather is really taking a toll on my productivity, but on the flip side I’m getting a lot more Vitamin D.
Cara Marie
Best Day
Friday was the best day of my life. I think that pretty much sums it up. I checked the weather for our region the night before, and it was supposed to be a high of 66 and sunny all day. My roommates and I decided to bust out the sun dresses. I chose a bright yellow dress, my favorite one. I also wore my new bright coral flats from Venice that have flowers on them. I made the executive decision to leave all jackets at Santa Chiara. You may think these are irrelevant details, but these choices lead to all my dreams coming true in the form of the best day of my life.
The plan for Friday included meeting with an architect at a resort she renovated, having lunch cooked by a wonderful chef, and going to a vineyard for a wine tasting. We took a morning stroll to wear we were meeting our bus, and as we were going downhill all the school kids were walking uphill. We got some strange looks from pretty much every Italian that walked or drove past us, because they were all bundled up in the 45 degree morning, and we were dressed for a summer pool party. It was a brisk morning, I’ll admit, but nothing I can’t handle.
We hopped on the bus, I fell asleep, and when I woke up we were in the most beautiful area I have ever seen. I thought I had become numb to the breathtaking scenery that surrounds me everywhere I have been in Italy, but this was something else. We had arrived at Borgo Finocchieto, a place that had once been a village, but has been renovated into an amazing resort. It is just south of Sienna, about an hour and a half north of Castiglion Fiorentino. We watched a video on the restoration, and it has an amazing history. They interviewed a man that lived there from his birth in 1923 until it started collapsing in 1983. He now lives just down the street and is 88 years old. In the video we watched, he talked about how there used to be stables on the main level, and about where he lived – in one of the buildings with 60 other people. The buildings that had once crammed poor Italian farmers into tight spaces are now high class apartments that rent for up to 21,000 euro/week. And they’re worth it. Pictures will have to describe what I saw, because everything was so beautiful I can’t put it into words.
When we first met the architect, we were standing outside the main building. We were listening to her talk about the history and some background on the project, and all of a sudden a fighter jet flew right over our heads! The manager of the resort, Marco, told us we were close to the Air Force Base, assuming American. A few minutes later another one flew over head – this one fully armed with missiles on either side. Sweet! They must have known we were coming and did a fly over just for us!
We toured the site before going into buildings, and as we stood in the warm sunshine we all agreed we made a wise choice with the dresses. We saw beautiful views from every part of the site – it sits up on a hill that has a historic castle on it too, so you can imagine how it’s prime real estate. There were a couple artists with easels out painting the sites. We walked around the vast green grassy fields, saw the tennis and basketball courts, saw the sleek oval shaped pool that overlooks the valley, and went inside the work-out room (which I would dare to call a complex). The work-out room was fully stocked with everything you’d need to work off all the delicious Italian food. The weights are right by the window that overlooks the pool and valley below – I’d work out every day if I had that set up! We went back into the locker rooms, where they have everything from a hot tub and sauna to a cold plunge and steam room. Not to mention it is all curvy walls and modern and pretty.
After the tour of the site, we went inside the buildings. We saw some of the rooms that you can rent out, all looking pretty five-star to me. There are living rooms and kitchens and studies and big-screen tv’s for the guests. They kept the original architecture as much as possible, including one of the buildings that was built with rammed-earth walls. They did some tricks, such as a solid wood beam (that spans much farther than it should) has a steel wide flange inserted into it, hidden into the original design.
Enough of that, next we watched the video I talked about that had the history and some of the restoration process. After the video we asked the architect some questions, and then it was time for lunch! They had prepared one long table in the courtyard for us to eat at. It was on a porch overlooking a fountain, reflection pool and garden area, and all the scenery past that. We had an antipasta of veggies and cheeses and meats, all in weird combinations with odd sauces and all delicious. Next we had ragu penne pasta with WILD BOAR meat. Yum. For dessert they brought out a beautifully presented strawberry shortcake-like thing. It was like a pound cake, with ice cream in the middle of the cake, strawberries all over the top, whipped cream and a sweet little chocolate spike on top. I think they used Hershey’s shell syrup to make the little accents.
After the tour of the site, we went inside the buildings. We saw some of the rooms that you can rent out, all looking pretty five-star to me. There are living rooms and kitchens and studies and big-screen tv’s for the guests. They kept the original architecture as much as possible, including one of the buildings that was built with rammed-earth walls. They did some tricks, such as a solid wood beam (that spans much farther than it should) has a steel wide flange inserted into it, hidden into the original design.
Enough of that, next we watched the video I talked about that had the history and some of the restoration process. After the video we asked the architect some questions, and then it was time for lunch! They had prepared one long table in the courtyard for us to eat at. It was on a porch overlooking a fountain, reflection pool and garden area, and all the scenery past that. We had an antipasta of veggies and cheeses and meats, all in weird combinations with odd sauces and all delicious. Next we had ragu penne pasta with WILD BOAR meat. Yum. For dessert they brought out a beautifully presented strawberry shortcake-like thing. It was like a pound cake, with ice cream in the middle of the cake, strawberries all over the top, whipped cream and a sweet little chocolate spike on top. I think they used Hershey’s shell syrup to make the little accents.
With all the wine you can drink, you can imagine there were a few spills of the day. Our professor, Chip, knocked over a wine glass and it shattered – way to go, teach’! My spill of the day was actually intentional. I was so thirsty I poured myself a huge glass of water from one of the bottles. Unfortunately it turned out to be the sparkling water. I tried to chug it, but all the bubbles were too hard to get down. I decided to pour it out under the table. I sneakily made sure everyone around me had picked up their bags, and I lifted our clean white table cloth and slowly poured my glass out, creating a puddle underneath the perfectly set table. Later that afternoon I did find some red sauce on my white cardigan, no idea how it got there.
After we stuffed ourselves with the wonderful food, we walked out to the edge of the property and basked in the sun. Well some people basked. I chose to frolic around in the surreal atmosphere I was in – we hopped over the string that fenced in the clean cut grass and adventured into the tall grass on the hill. This was the height of my day. Of my life. I was in my favorite dress with my favorite new shoes running through lush green grass in perfect weather at an amazing resort after eating an amazing meal, in Italy. I even belted out some “Sound of Music” while I was spinning on the hill. There are plenty of pictures to give you a better idea, and plenty of new profile pics for me! Unfortunately, we had to snap back to reality and realize that time ticks on, and we had another appointment to make – a wine tasting just down the street. We all slowly made our way to the bus and said goodbye to paradise.
We had been told that at the next place we would have to walk about a mile, because the bus can only go so far. Walking a mile was no big deal, seeing as we walk more than that to get to La Pievuccia, our site for studio. When we came to a dirt road with a woman flagging us down, we saw the mile we were going to have to walk – all uphill. We began walking up the hill, and the steeper the incline got the happier I was with my wardrobe choice. If I had been wearing much more I might have had a heat stroke. It was still beautiful and wonderful and so awesome, just a little more strenuous than expected. Didn’t put a damper on the perfect day though, considering the landscape we were walking through. When we got to the top of the hill the woman, Analise, goes, “Oh, you wish it was this house! Keep going!” So we walked another half mile or so, and finally arrived at her house.
This was another historical building. It used to be a monastery, and then a convent, and now is her home and vineyard. She told us about her history, how her and her husband moved there, looked out at the land and asked, “A fourth child, or wine?” They chose to plant some grapes and see how it goes. They struck gold and now produce 4000-5000 bottles each year. We saw the cellar, and then went in the church that is attached to her house. The church has enough room for about 30 people, and that would be pushing it. It’s very small, and still has all the original architecture and even some original furniture. She told us that she sometimes has a priest come and do Mass, on special occasions such as before and after harvest.
The wine tasting was very casual, probably because she had 30 college students with her. We tried one red wine, and it was very good – I think as a whole we bought the rest of her stock for the year. We all just hung around and talked, and refilled our glasses as much as we wanted. I was just thrilled that there were saltine crackers and natural water.
After the wine tasting we hiked back down the hill, got on the bus, and I fell asleep until we were pulling into Castiglion Fiorentino. We took a quick nap before dinner, ate pasta with olives, potato quiche, and even got a blood orange for dessert. I showered, watched a movie (The American – warning, very confusing and depressing), and now I’m about to hit the sack.
What a perfect day. Best day ever. Wish I could relive it. Saturday we plan to go to Orvieto for a battle between the two schools on the soccer field. We plan on losing – already accepting it. In the evening we’ll be wearing our masks and parading around Orvieto for a jolly good time with all the K-State kiddos in Italy. Hoorah!
Cara Marie
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