So for my final trip of the semester, I headed to Venice again. But this time with my parents! They came in for the end of the program on Wednesday, saw my concert Thursday (more on the end of school another time), helped me move out on Friday, and then Saturday we headed to Venice. Despite it being my third time I saw a ton of new stuff.
Saturday we more or less got in (our train was really late, well, not as late as one of the trains coming into Centrale which was over 200 minutes late), walked around a bit, and had dinner at one of my mom's favorite places from my parents' visit two years ago (by the way, Saturday was my mom's birthday). It was this enoteca with the crazy owner (I believe) who would walk away while half mumbling things. But we had a great dinner.
Sunday we went and saw the Peggy Guiggenheim collection. Peggy Guiggenheim was an American heiress who collected modern art. She has multiple Picassos and Pollacks and other well known modern artists. It's in her old house too so we saw many places where she was a learned about her crazy life (look her up!). After that we headed to see Maria Della Salute, a church I'd wanted to go in since my first trip to Venice but never made it to (well, Aaron and I tried but it was closed in the afternoon). Then we headed to see the Doge's Palace which was beautiful and interesting. Best part...you get to walk across the Bridge of Sighs. Win.
Monday was really cool because my parents had scheduled a cooking class. We went to the island of Lido (where there are cars) to this professional chef's house (she catered the wedding in Venice for one of the producers of Grey's Anatomy and has been featured in Bon Appetite, she's that good) and she taught us how to make a few seafood dishes. We had a full five course meal for lunch which was fantastic and we got all of the recipes to try out again when we get home. After we went to see San Giorgio which is on its own island and my parents had missed before (I taught them how to take the vaporettos around Venice) and the church where the artist Titan is buried and has many of his major works.
Tuesday was a lazier day after all the craziness. We wandered the Rialto markets (the fish markets were pretty cool), saw the church with Tintoretto's "food fight" Last Supper (Rick Steves' words, not mine...but he was accurate), and took two of Rick Steves' walks in his Venice book (one of which we did backwards, turns out that Venetian streets aren't always the same name depending on what direction you're coming from). We also ended up during one of the walks at La Fenice, Venice's opera house. We went inside and the ticket came with a free audio tour. La Fenice means the phoenix and like a phoenix La Fenice has actually burned and risen again from its ashes, not once...but twice. First in the mid-1800s and again in 1996. It was really beautiful though. We finished with a dinner near our hotel and packed for Wednesday.
Wednesday morning (today) we had a water-taxi to the train station, way earlier than our train, but it was raining so we just hung around the station until our train came. We headed back to Milan and now we're waiting for morning (aka, 4:15) for the car to the airport and then our flights to Rome and to Chicago. Fingers crossed the weather is good!
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Friday, December 10, 2010
Dublino!
So, thanks to San Ambrogio (patron saint of Milan) day this past Tuesday and the Immaculate Conception on Wednesday and all of our teacher's being super nice and canceling Monday classes, plus a Friday off because we get every Friday off...I had a really long weekend. So Allie and I hopped on a plane Friday morning and headed to Ireland, or more specifically to Dublin.
Friday we got in during the afternoon, ate some fish and chips (a must of course) and walked around the city. Thursday Dublin got hit with a lot of snow (we heard of people rerouted through Shannon and then having to take a bus due to the snow) so there was snow everywhere. The snow hasn't stuck in Milan yet (and might not the entire time I'm here) so my northern self was very happy to see snow on the ground. Allie's southwestern self was not. We found Grafton street where all the shopping apparently is, got some hot chocolate (one thing that the Italians do much better than anywhere else I've been so it was a little sad...) and just walked around. At night we hit up a pub I had read about that is supposed to have fantastic live Irish music, and they did. They have a group of four guys that just play for hours and talk, it was fantastic. Also, I had my first ever Guinness in an Irish pub in Dublin. Pretty special.
So starting Saturday we began to use the Dublin Passes we had purchased. We started at Christ Church Cathedral which is quite beautiful to walk around and one of the two main churches in Dublin. After that we hit up Dublina which is about the vikings in Dublin. A rather hilarious and epic museum if I do say so myself. We learned about vikings (they did not wear horned hats) and life in Dublin during the medieval times. After Dublina was one of the must hit spots of Dublin: The Guinness Storehouse. We walked through the museum which is pretty interesting. They tell you how Guinness is made and you can see old advertising stuff for Guinness. Sadly the pour the perfect pint section was closed so we couldn't take a hand at being bartenders but at the top in The Gravity Bar awaits your "free" Guinness after you go through the tour. I learned a lot actually. Including the fun fact that Arthur Guinness signed his lease on St. James Gate where Guinness is still brewed (including all Guinness sold in the US) for 9,000 years. That was 251 years ago so you do the math on how many years of Guinness we have left to enjoy.
We ended our Saturday with one of the best experiences I think we had in Dublin. We had a discount on the Dublin Literary Pub Crawl so we decided to go. It was mentioned in my guidebook and apparently voted one of the top 50 walks in the world by a big magazine. It was fantastic and I highly recommend it to anybody who goes, especially if they're big into literature. We went to four pubs with two actors who told us about the famous literary connections to the pubs. Many were frequented by writers such as Samuel Becket and Brendan Behan and one was part of a setting in James Joyce's Ulysses (they love James Joyce...). The actors acted out parts of plays and other literature from Ireland. We didn't have a huge amount of time at each pub but it was really cool just to hear about everything and watch the performances. Definitely highly recommended by me if you're traveling to Dublin.
Sunday we started off right by going to church...and by that I mean we visited St. Patrick's Cathedral. It is beautiful, surrounded by beautiful gardens (I assume, they were covered in snow), and you can see Jonathan Swift's grave. Apparently he was a big shot in the church as well as being a writer. This puts "A Modest Proposal" into an even more interesting life. After St. Patrick's we trekked all the way to the Kilmainham Gaol (Jail). This is a since abandoned jail but it has seen much of Irish history. One of the main topics we heard about was the 1916 Easter Rising. The men who started the rising with the reading of their declaration of Ireland as a republic (an act of treason against Britain) were almost all held in Kilmainham Gaol and all were executed in Kilmainham. The only one not kept at the jail was James Connolly who was injured by a shot to the ankle and held at the make-shift Red Cross station in Dublin Castle. He was then famously tied to a chair in order not to fall over, as gangrene had set into his wound, before being executed by a firing squad in one of the courtyards of Kilmainham Gaol. We got to see this courtyard as well.
After the jail we walked to the Dublin Zoo...because who doesn't love animals? We had fun walking around although many of the Saharan animals were hiding inside under their heat lamps. But we got to see them anyway. The zoo is located in Phoenix Park which is the largest park in Europe so we also walked around there. We took a bus back to the city center (we had walked a lot) and got some more fish and chips (yum!). We were going to call it a day since everything in Dublin seemed to close at 5 but we realized that the National Wax Museum Plus was open until seven and included on our card. We thought it would be hilarious so we went. And it was. The first part is actually really interesting. It's all about Irish history, a lot of which we'd learned at the jail that morning. After that you hit the parts where they have various characters and such made out of the wax. We had a fantastic time posing with them, writing letters the the sleeping, wax Santa Claus, and taking a ton of pictures. It was great.
Monday was our final day with the Dublin Pass. We headed first to the Dublin Castle. We saw the gardens (covered in snow) and got to take a tour of the state apartments. This included the room were James Connolly was held before being executed at Kilmainham and the throne which the British ruler would sit upon when in Dublin. A British ruler has not visited Ireland (the southern part obviously) in 99 years and we found out that Queen Elizabeth II will be making her first state visit to Dublin next year, marking the 100th anniversary of the last time a state visit was made to Dublin by the British. She will also be the first of her ancestors not to sit on this throne.
After that we continued our knowledge of Irish/Dublin history by visiting the Dublin City Hall exhibit which was fun. There were lots of video and cool artifacts including the Sword of Dublin (my favorite). We headed from there to the Old Jameson Distillery. Jameson (a whiskey if you didn't know) is no longer made in Dublin but in Cork. However, they show you the whole process in Dublin and tell you about how Jameson is different from most other whiskeys/scotches. At the end you get a "free" tasting and they do a tasting with eight of the group of Jameson, a scotch (Johnny Walker Black), and an American whiskey (Jack Daniels). 6 of the 8 chose Jameson. I didn't do the tasting but my friend did and I got to try a bit of each and I agreed with the group.
We went to lunch after in an old church that's been converted. It's actually the church were Arthur Guinness got married, but now it's a pub and restaurant. We wandered Dublin a bit more since everything was closed, got some dessert and a snack at Bewley's were we frequented often, and just relaxed.
Tuesday we headed out of Dublin. We took the DART which is a train that hits the nearby cities and went to Dun Laoghaire (pronounced Dun Leary...Gaelic is weird sometimes) which is a costal city. Of course, it was the one day it rained. We got some tea the minute we got in because it was so cold and wet. Then we walked the pier. Luckily it stopped raining for some of this and it was beautiful despite the weather. But, we were so freezing we decided to head to Dun Laoghaire's boasted about (on their tourist board) "12-screen cinema complex." We saw the newest Harry Potter. I never saw the 6th movie but I've read the books. I normally avoid the movies because I don't think they're very good after the books. But I have to say that the first part of the 7th is the best yet.
We headed back into Dublin, got some good pub food for dinner, and relaxed in our hostel before heading to bed (we had a super nice hostel by the way. Ashfield House if anybody's interested).
Wednesday was our last day in Dublin and we decided to hit up the free things. We went to the National Museum of Archeology first. I never knew there was so much gold in Ireland. It was half the museum! And then I saw bog bodies which was kinda creepy. If you don't know what those are, look them up, I don't feel like describing them. Then we headed to St. Stephen's Green and walked around, saw the bust of James Joyce, and enjoyed the day. It was pretty sunny even if there still was snow and ice on the ground (Allie had since learned how to walk on ice and how to layer so she was much more content with the snow than before). We got lunch after that and headed to the National Gallery. It was nice to see Irish and English paintings that weren't religiously based (as much) after spending so much time in Italy. Every painting in Italy is "Madonna Con Bambino" (Madonna and Child) and it gets a bit tiring after a bit. However, we did see one of the most famous Caravaggio paintings and we had to go to Dublin to do it.
We went to Marrion Square after that which is another park that boasts the Oscar Wilde reclining statue. We walked around, saw where Oscar Wilde spent his childhood, and then just walked around some more. We checked times for a bus the next morning, did some souvenir shopping, and had a final Irish dinner before heading to bed super early before embarking on our very early journey home the next morning.
If you want to hear about that journey home, you should ask me. Because the details of it are too frustrating for me to write here. But I'll start with this: we got up at 2:45 am.
Friday we got in during the afternoon, ate some fish and chips (a must of course) and walked around the city. Thursday Dublin got hit with a lot of snow (we heard of people rerouted through Shannon and then having to take a bus due to the snow) so there was snow everywhere. The snow hasn't stuck in Milan yet (and might not the entire time I'm here) so my northern self was very happy to see snow on the ground. Allie's southwestern self was not. We found Grafton street where all the shopping apparently is, got some hot chocolate (one thing that the Italians do much better than anywhere else I've been so it was a little sad...) and just walked around. At night we hit up a pub I had read about that is supposed to have fantastic live Irish music, and they did. They have a group of four guys that just play for hours and talk, it was fantastic. Also, I had my first ever Guinness in an Irish pub in Dublin. Pretty special.
So starting Saturday we began to use the Dublin Passes we had purchased. We started at Christ Church Cathedral which is quite beautiful to walk around and one of the two main churches in Dublin. After that we hit up Dublina which is about the vikings in Dublin. A rather hilarious and epic museum if I do say so myself. We learned about vikings (they did not wear horned hats) and life in Dublin during the medieval times. After Dublina was one of the must hit spots of Dublin: The Guinness Storehouse. We walked through the museum which is pretty interesting. They tell you how Guinness is made and you can see old advertising stuff for Guinness. Sadly the pour the perfect pint section was closed so we couldn't take a hand at being bartenders but at the top in The Gravity Bar awaits your "free" Guinness after you go through the tour. I learned a lot actually. Including the fun fact that Arthur Guinness signed his lease on St. James Gate where Guinness is still brewed (including all Guinness sold in the US) for 9,000 years. That was 251 years ago so you do the math on how many years of Guinness we have left to enjoy.
We ended our Saturday with one of the best experiences I think we had in Dublin. We had a discount on the Dublin Literary Pub Crawl so we decided to go. It was mentioned in my guidebook and apparently voted one of the top 50 walks in the world by a big magazine. It was fantastic and I highly recommend it to anybody who goes, especially if they're big into literature. We went to four pubs with two actors who told us about the famous literary connections to the pubs. Many were frequented by writers such as Samuel Becket and Brendan Behan and one was part of a setting in James Joyce's Ulysses (they love James Joyce...). The actors acted out parts of plays and other literature from Ireland. We didn't have a huge amount of time at each pub but it was really cool just to hear about everything and watch the performances. Definitely highly recommended by me if you're traveling to Dublin.
Sunday we started off right by going to church...and by that I mean we visited St. Patrick's Cathedral. It is beautiful, surrounded by beautiful gardens (I assume, they were covered in snow), and you can see Jonathan Swift's grave. Apparently he was a big shot in the church as well as being a writer. This puts "A Modest Proposal" into an even more interesting life. After St. Patrick's we trekked all the way to the Kilmainham Gaol (Jail). This is a since abandoned jail but it has seen much of Irish history. One of the main topics we heard about was the 1916 Easter Rising. The men who started the rising with the reading of their declaration of Ireland as a republic (an act of treason against Britain) were almost all held in Kilmainham Gaol and all were executed in Kilmainham. The only one not kept at the jail was James Connolly who was injured by a shot to the ankle and held at the make-shift Red Cross station in Dublin Castle. He was then famously tied to a chair in order not to fall over, as gangrene had set into his wound, before being executed by a firing squad in one of the courtyards of Kilmainham Gaol. We got to see this courtyard as well.
After the jail we walked to the Dublin Zoo...because who doesn't love animals? We had fun walking around although many of the Saharan animals were hiding inside under their heat lamps. But we got to see them anyway. The zoo is located in Phoenix Park which is the largest park in Europe so we also walked around there. We took a bus back to the city center (we had walked a lot) and got some more fish and chips (yum!). We were going to call it a day since everything in Dublin seemed to close at 5 but we realized that the National Wax Museum Plus was open until seven and included on our card. We thought it would be hilarious so we went. And it was. The first part is actually really interesting. It's all about Irish history, a lot of which we'd learned at the jail that morning. After that you hit the parts where they have various characters and such made out of the wax. We had a fantastic time posing with them, writing letters the the sleeping, wax Santa Claus, and taking a ton of pictures. It was great.
Monday was our final day with the Dublin Pass. We headed first to the Dublin Castle. We saw the gardens (covered in snow) and got to take a tour of the state apartments. This included the room were James Connolly was held before being executed at Kilmainham and the throne which the British ruler would sit upon when in Dublin. A British ruler has not visited Ireland (the southern part obviously) in 99 years and we found out that Queen Elizabeth II will be making her first state visit to Dublin next year, marking the 100th anniversary of the last time a state visit was made to Dublin by the British. She will also be the first of her ancestors not to sit on this throne.
After that we continued our knowledge of Irish/Dublin history by visiting the Dublin City Hall exhibit which was fun. There were lots of video and cool artifacts including the Sword of Dublin (my favorite). We headed from there to the Old Jameson Distillery. Jameson (a whiskey if you didn't know) is no longer made in Dublin but in Cork. However, they show you the whole process in Dublin and tell you about how Jameson is different from most other whiskeys/scotches. At the end you get a "free" tasting and they do a tasting with eight of the group of Jameson, a scotch (Johnny Walker Black), and an American whiskey (Jack Daniels). 6 of the 8 chose Jameson. I didn't do the tasting but my friend did and I got to try a bit of each and I agreed with the group.
We went to lunch after in an old church that's been converted. It's actually the church were Arthur Guinness got married, but now it's a pub and restaurant. We wandered Dublin a bit more since everything was closed, got some dessert and a snack at Bewley's were we frequented often, and just relaxed.
Tuesday we headed out of Dublin. We took the DART which is a train that hits the nearby cities and went to Dun Laoghaire (pronounced Dun Leary...Gaelic is weird sometimes) which is a costal city. Of course, it was the one day it rained. We got some tea the minute we got in because it was so cold and wet. Then we walked the pier. Luckily it stopped raining for some of this and it was beautiful despite the weather. But, we were so freezing we decided to head to Dun Laoghaire's boasted about (on their tourist board) "12-screen cinema complex." We saw the newest Harry Potter. I never saw the 6th movie but I've read the books. I normally avoid the movies because I don't think they're very good after the books. But I have to say that the first part of the 7th is the best yet.
We headed back into Dublin, got some good pub food for dinner, and relaxed in our hostel before heading to bed (we had a super nice hostel by the way. Ashfield House if anybody's interested).
Wednesday was our last day in Dublin and we decided to hit up the free things. We went to the National Museum of Archeology first. I never knew there was so much gold in Ireland. It was half the museum! And then I saw bog bodies which was kinda creepy. If you don't know what those are, look them up, I don't feel like describing them. Then we headed to St. Stephen's Green and walked around, saw the bust of James Joyce, and enjoyed the day. It was pretty sunny even if there still was snow and ice on the ground (Allie had since learned how to walk on ice and how to layer so she was much more content with the snow than before). We got lunch after that and headed to the National Gallery. It was nice to see Irish and English paintings that weren't religiously based (as much) after spending so much time in Italy. Every painting in Italy is "Madonna Con Bambino" (Madonna and Child) and it gets a bit tiring after a bit. However, we did see one of the most famous Caravaggio paintings and we had to go to Dublin to do it.
We went to Marrion Square after that which is another park that boasts the Oscar Wilde reclining statue. We walked around, saw where Oscar Wilde spent his childhood, and then just walked around some more. We checked times for a bus the next morning, did some souvenir shopping, and had a final Irish dinner before heading to bed super early before embarking on our very early journey home the next morning.
If you want to hear about that journey home, you should ask me. Because the details of it are too frustrating for me to write here. But I'll start with this: we got up at 2:45 am.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Aaron Visits: Milano, Torino, e Venezia
So after getting back from Rome on Sunday I was back at Malpensa Airport to pick up Aaron on Monday afternoon. It was great to see him after being gone for twelve weeks. We're used to not seeing each other for long amounts of time, but never as long as it had been this time.
After getting him settled in and making sure he didn't sleep (I beat the jet-lag out of him) we went to the Duomo area. The Christmas tree was being put up and they had it lit up for ten minutes while we were there. I showed Aaron the outside of the Duomo, the Vittorio Emmanuele Galleria (he spun on the bull's testicles for good luck), the outside of La Scala, and the castle. We got dinner near my apartment and I took Aaron to our 100 Flavor (centogusti) shop in order to get him his very first gelato.
Tuesday morning I had to perform for my music class so Aaron actually came along to hear me. He picked a good day to come since it was probably our most interesting class all semester. Then he and I went back to the Duomo, saw the inside, had some panzerotti at Luini's (if you're ever in Milan you have to go there, it's cheap and delicious. Perfect for lunch), and then we climbed to the top of the Duomo. It was so clear outside that you could see the mountains to the north. It was really beautiful.
After that I had to have a horn lessons so Aaron occupied himself by going to La Scala's museum and walking around the castle area. He met me at the IES center and we headed to my apartment to relax a bit before we went and got some traditional Sicilian pizza at Spontini (another place to hit up if you're in Milan).
Wednesday Aaron explored the city some more while I went to Italian class and then we went to see a few churches and wandered around a bit, got lunch, and then I headed to my second class of the day. After that we were going to go to the Science and Technology Museum but the entrance is really confusing to find and by the time we had an idea of where it was the museum was only going to be open for another hour.
However, in the evening he and I both had our first experience at an Italian soccer (or calcio as they say) game. We went to see Inter Milan play FC Twente with Allie as well. Our seats were with all of the Inter Milan fans which was crazy. They are the most organized sports fans ever. They all knew every cheer and some of them were really complicated. Allie and I managed to understand a few but we were even lost. Aaron knows no Italian so I told him what I did understand which still wasn't a lot. Especially when it was a really long and complicated "song" instead of a shorter chant. When Inter scored the one goal of the game everybody went crazy. It was so much fun. And it was really exciting that Inter won!
I don't have classes on Thursdays so Aaron and I decided to take a day trip. I knew Torino was close and I'd heard it was a nice city. It's the third largest in Italy and was the host of the 2006 Winter Olympics (in English it's often referred to as Turin). We took about a two hour train to get there, walked around a lot. We saw the two main piazzas, a student protest in one of them (we steered away from it and watched from a distance. They definitely egged a government building. From what I figured out they were protesting monetary cuts from the public university), a palace or two, Torino's Duomo (which has this shroud that many believe was the shroud on Jesus's face in the tomb and it has an imprint of his face on it), and a few parks. We had a really good lunch and continued to walk around more.
We ended up going to the Cinema Museum but not to see the museum, but to go up in the tower. They have this spire on the building that you can ride and elevator up the museum and up onto the top of it. You can see the mountains all around you and the city of Torino is laid out in front of you. It's really beautiful so we spent a lot of time up there. After that we headed to Torino's Egyptian Museum. Torino actually has the third largest Egyptian collection in the world after Cairo and London. It's also in a museum completely dedicated to Egypt, not among other things as in London apparently. There was a nice student discount so we went and walked around. It was really interesting to see all of this Egypt stuff, even if we were in Italy.
After the Egyptian museum we headed back to the train station (after stopping for gelato of course) and back to Milan. Now, as Thursday was Thanksgiving we decided to go have a really big Italian dinner. We went to another restaurant in my neighborhood and had the primi piatti (pasta) and the secondi piatti (meat usually) as well as dessert. The whole dinner took over two hours to eat and we were stuffed after it. We had originally thought to get two desserts to share and ended up only having one. After that we went and Skyped with my family which was really great. Everybody who was at my house just kept filing past the computer and talking to me. All my cousins from my mom's family got on at the same time (including Sammy the dog) and I talked to my Grandpa and everybody else. I wish everybody could have been there but it was fantastic to talk to those who were. As much as I'm going to miss Milan I'm really looking forward to going home for Christmas Eve and Christmas and getting to see everybody.
So Friday I had three hour Italian. I had booked Aaron a ticket to see Da Vinci's The Last Supper so he went to that first and loved it, as does everybody who sees it. Then he walked around and managed to find himself a leather jacket which was his one purchase for himself. He met me at IES and we grabbed some lunch to go for our train we had to catch to Venezia (or Venice for those of you who don't know Italian names of towns).
When we got to Venice it was pouring rain and freezing. We had to find where we were staying and then we decided to venture back out since it was only 5:30 and we had a lot of time. We took the vaporetto to San Marco to see the outside and ended up wandering around. We popped into a lot of Murano glass shops (definitely one of my favorite things in Venice) and ended up walking all the way to the Rialto Bridge. We found some dinner near the Rialto before heading back for the night.
Luckily we woke up Saturday to blue skies and sun. We went back to San Marco again and went inside. We also went upstairs to go on the terrace that overlooks Piazza San Marco and then to the museum up there which was really interesting. I didn't even know there was that much of a museum up there and I enjoyed it a lot.
We then tried to go see the church were Vivaldi was baptized (which I had stumbled across the last time I was in Venice) but they were just closing up. So we got some lunch and headed to Isola San Giorgio with the intention of going up the bell tower to view Venice from above. However, there's this thing where most churches close for a few hours in the afternoon and we were right in that time. But we got some good views of Venice from the island before heading back to the main island. We then tried to go the Santa Maria Della Salute which was also closed. So...we wandered. And wandering in Venice is pretty fun. Eventually you end up back at the Grand Canal. We ended up back there at the Accademia bridge and then went back up towards the Rialto. We spent the rest of our day just wandering, seeing the picturesque-ness of Venice, and looking in the windows of every Murano glass shop we saw (if you've never seen Murano glass you should Google it. It's gorgeous).
We had a very early dinner at a pizzeria and then we were on the last train back from Venice to Milan. When we got back we had to pack everything up. I bought a suitcase here for Aaron to take back with him so we had to fit everything in it. Then this morning we got up early and I took Aaron back to the airport and he headed off to Atlanta and then he'll head to Detroit.
It was fantastic to Aaron here in general and really nice to have somebody to spend Thanksgiving with. Next visitors: my parents! Just two and a half weeks!
After getting him settled in and making sure he didn't sleep (I beat the jet-lag out of him) we went to the Duomo area. The Christmas tree was being put up and they had it lit up for ten minutes while we were there. I showed Aaron the outside of the Duomo, the Vittorio Emmanuele Galleria (he spun on the bull's testicles for good luck), the outside of La Scala, and the castle. We got dinner near my apartment and I took Aaron to our 100 Flavor (centogusti) shop in order to get him his very first gelato.
Tuesday morning I had to perform for my music class so Aaron actually came along to hear me. He picked a good day to come since it was probably our most interesting class all semester. Then he and I went back to the Duomo, saw the inside, had some panzerotti at Luini's (if you're ever in Milan you have to go there, it's cheap and delicious. Perfect for lunch), and then we climbed to the top of the Duomo. It was so clear outside that you could see the mountains to the north. It was really beautiful.
After that I had to have a horn lessons so Aaron occupied himself by going to La Scala's museum and walking around the castle area. He met me at the IES center and we headed to my apartment to relax a bit before we went and got some traditional Sicilian pizza at Spontini (another place to hit up if you're in Milan).
Wednesday Aaron explored the city some more while I went to Italian class and then we went to see a few churches and wandered around a bit, got lunch, and then I headed to my second class of the day. After that we were going to go to the Science and Technology Museum but the entrance is really confusing to find and by the time we had an idea of where it was the museum was only going to be open for another hour.
However, in the evening he and I both had our first experience at an Italian soccer (or calcio as they say) game. We went to see Inter Milan play FC Twente with Allie as well. Our seats were with all of the Inter Milan fans which was crazy. They are the most organized sports fans ever. They all knew every cheer and some of them were really complicated. Allie and I managed to understand a few but we were even lost. Aaron knows no Italian so I told him what I did understand which still wasn't a lot. Especially when it was a really long and complicated "song" instead of a shorter chant. When Inter scored the one goal of the game everybody went crazy. It was so much fun. And it was really exciting that Inter won!
I don't have classes on Thursdays so Aaron and I decided to take a day trip. I knew Torino was close and I'd heard it was a nice city. It's the third largest in Italy and was the host of the 2006 Winter Olympics (in English it's often referred to as Turin). We took about a two hour train to get there, walked around a lot. We saw the two main piazzas, a student protest in one of them (we steered away from it and watched from a distance. They definitely egged a government building. From what I figured out they were protesting monetary cuts from the public university), a palace or two, Torino's Duomo (which has this shroud that many believe was the shroud on Jesus's face in the tomb and it has an imprint of his face on it), and a few parks. We had a really good lunch and continued to walk around more.
We ended up going to the Cinema Museum but not to see the museum, but to go up in the tower. They have this spire on the building that you can ride and elevator up the museum and up onto the top of it. You can see the mountains all around you and the city of Torino is laid out in front of you. It's really beautiful so we spent a lot of time up there. After that we headed to Torino's Egyptian Museum. Torino actually has the third largest Egyptian collection in the world after Cairo and London. It's also in a museum completely dedicated to Egypt, not among other things as in London apparently. There was a nice student discount so we went and walked around. It was really interesting to see all of this Egypt stuff, even if we were in Italy.
After the Egyptian museum we headed back to the train station (after stopping for gelato of course) and back to Milan. Now, as Thursday was Thanksgiving we decided to go have a really big Italian dinner. We went to another restaurant in my neighborhood and had the primi piatti (pasta) and the secondi piatti (meat usually) as well as dessert. The whole dinner took over two hours to eat and we were stuffed after it. We had originally thought to get two desserts to share and ended up only having one. After that we went and Skyped with my family which was really great. Everybody who was at my house just kept filing past the computer and talking to me. All my cousins from my mom's family got on at the same time (including Sammy the dog) and I talked to my Grandpa and everybody else. I wish everybody could have been there but it was fantastic to talk to those who were. As much as I'm going to miss Milan I'm really looking forward to going home for Christmas Eve and Christmas and getting to see everybody.
So Friday I had three hour Italian. I had booked Aaron a ticket to see Da Vinci's The Last Supper so he went to that first and loved it, as does everybody who sees it. Then he walked around and managed to find himself a leather jacket which was his one purchase for himself. He met me at IES and we grabbed some lunch to go for our train we had to catch to Venezia (or Venice for those of you who don't know Italian names of towns).
When we got to Venice it was pouring rain and freezing. We had to find where we were staying and then we decided to venture back out since it was only 5:30 and we had a lot of time. We took the vaporetto to San Marco to see the outside and ended up wandering around. We popped into a lot of Murano glass shops (definitely one of my favorite things in Venice) and ended up walking all the way to the Rialto Bridge. We found some dinner near the Rialto before heading back for the night.
Luckily we woke up Saturday to blue skies and sun. We went back to San Marco again and went inside. We also went upstairs to go on the terrace that overlooks Piazza San Marco and then to the museum up there which was really interesting. I didn't even know there was that much of a museum up there and I enjoyed it a lot.
We then tried to go see the church were Vivaldi was baptized (which I had stumbled across the last time I was in Venice) but they were just closing up. So we got some lunch and headed to Isola San Giorgio with the intention of going up the bell tower to view Venice from above. However, there's this thing where most churches close for a few hours in the afternoon and we were right in that time. But we got some good views of Venice from the island before heading back to the main island. We then tried to go the Santa Maria Della Salute which was also closed. So...we wandered. And wandering in Venice is pretty fun. Eventually you end up back at the Grand Canal. We ended up back there at the Accademia bridge and then went back up towards the Rialto. We spent the rest of our day just wandering, seeing the picturesque-ness of Venice, and looking in the windows of every Murano glass shop we saw (if you've never seen Murano glass you should Google it. It's gorgeous).
We had a very early dinner at a pizzeria and then we were on the last train back from Venice to Milan. When we got back we had to pack everything up. I bought a suitcase here for Aaron to take back with him so we had to fit everything in it. Then this morning we got up early and I took Aaron back to the airport and he headed off to Atlanta and then he'll head to Detroit.
It was fantastic to Aaron here in general and really nice to have somebody to spend Thanksgiving with. Next visitors: my parents! Just two and a half weeks!
Monday, November 22, 2010
Roma!
So we had another long weekend and my friend Allie and I jetted off to Rome (yes, we took a plane...it is cheaper and faster than a train actually).
We got in Thursday evening, had some dinner at a cute restaurant near the Colosseum (we were about 10 minutes from there in our hostel) and got to see the Colosseum all lit up at night. It's beautiful at night and I loved getting to see that.
We got up on Friday and we hit practically everything. We saw the Colosseum and the Arch of Constantine during the day. Then we spent forever trying to find the entrance to the Roman Forum and walked around three quarters of it (it's huge) before figuring out that the Roman Forum is no longer free, it's a combined ticket for the Colosseum, Palatine Hill, and the Roman Forum. We were saving our pennies for the Vatican but we got some nice views of the Forum as we walked around. We saw a bunch more ruins, Capitoline Hill, and the Vittorio Emanuelle Monument and then headed to the Pantheon which is beautiful and a must see in Rome.
After the Pantheon we decided to have a quick pick-me-up and we headed to Giolitti...best gelato in Italy. I went there last time I was in Rome nine years ago and my dad and cousin Anna insisted I go back. It was still as good as I remembered.
Next we hit the Piazza Navona for some people watching before getting lunch. After lunch we walked over to the Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps. We climbed the steps and watched the sun set over Rome from the top. We then met up with two other friends from our program that happened to be also be in Rome (one was Allie's roommate). We went for a cappuccino at the oldest cafe in Rome and then Allie and I headed back to the hostel...exhausted from the large amounts of walking we did (Milan's public transportation is way better than Rome's).
Saturday morning we woke up super early, had breakfast, and took the metro out to the Vatican. We met up again with our friends and went through the Vatican museum. We only had to wait an hour in line but it was pouring rain so that wasn't fun. We were very happy to find that there's a really good student discount for the Vatican museums. Last time I was there I only remember seeing the Sistine Chapel but we saw pretty much the whole museum. Besides the Sistine Chapel I enjoyed seeing the Raphel rooms and his famous frescos including my friend Allie's favorite "School of Athens."
We ate lunch when we finally finished with the museum and then head to St. Peter's. The sun came out and we had a great time seeing the church, Michelangelo's Pieta, and a lot of people in interesting hats (not all clergy...although we saw a cardinal in the Vatican museum and three Bishops in St. Peter's Square.
We walked over to Castel Sant'Angelo and saw the outside, plus a nearby palace before taking our friends to...you guessed it...Giolitti! We had some wonderful gelato before heading back to our hostel. We wandered a bit and ended up finding the Roman Theatre ruins which were cool to see, especially since it was night and they were all lit up.
Sunday we slept in and relaxed after our two really big days. We hit up the Campo dei Fiori to see some markets and look around. We also headed back to the Piazza Navona for people watching before getting our final gelato at Giolitti. We headed back to the hostel, made it through the thunderstorm that had hit Rome, and headed back to the airport (luckily the storm didn't last long and our plane was only delayed slightly).
It was a wonderful trip to see the Eternal City and I took a lot of pictures that will be up soon, but first I have to head to pick up Aaron at the Milan airport! He'll be here for a week and we'll see Milan, Torino, and Venice! I can't wait.
We got in Thursday evening, had some dinner at a cute restaurant near the Colosseum (we were about 10 minutes from there in our hostel) and got to see the Colosseum all lit up at night. It's beautiful at night and I loved getting to see that.
We got up on Friday and we hit practically everything. We saw the Colosseum and the Arch of Constantine during the day. Then we spent forever trying to find the entrance to the Roman Forum and walked around three quarters of it (it's huge) before figuring out that the Roman Forum is no longer free, it's a combined ticket for the Colosseum, Palatine Hill, and the Roman Forum. We were saving our pennies for the Vatican but we got some nice views of the Forum as we walked around. We saw a bunch more ruins, Capitoline Hill, and the Vittorio Emanuelle Monument and then headed to the Pantheon which is beautiful and a must see in Rome.
After the Pantheon we decided to have a quick pick-me-up and we headed to Giolitti...best gelato in Italy. I went there last time I was in Rome nine years ago and my dad and cousin Anna insisted I go back. It was still as good as I remembered.
Next we hit the Piazza Navona for some people watching before getting lunch. After lunch we walked over to the Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps. We climbed the steps and watched the sun set over Rome from the top. We then met up with two other friends from our program that happened to be also be in Rome (one was Allie's roommate). We went for a cappuccino at the oldest cafe in Rome and then Allie and I headed back to the hostel...exhausted from the large amounts of walking we did (Milan's public transportation is way better than Rome's).
Saturday morning we woke up super early, had breakfast, and took the metro out to the Vatican. We met up again with our friends and went through the Vatican museum. We only had to wait an hour in line but it was pouring rain so that wasn't fun. We were very happy to find that there's a really good student discount for the Vatican museums. Last time I was there I only remember seeing the Sistine Chapel but we saw pretty much the whole museum. Besides the Sistine Chapel I enjoyed seeing the Raphel rooms and his famous frescos including my friend Allie's favorite "School of Athens."
We ate lunch when we finally finished with the museum and then head to St. Peter's. The sun came out and we had a great time seeing the church, Michelangelo's Pieta, and a lot of people in interesting hats (not all clergy...although we saw a cardinal in the Vatican museum and three Bishops in St. Peter's Square.
We walked over to Castel Sant'Angelo and saw the outside, plus a nearby palace before taking our friends to...you guessed it...Giolitti! We had some wonderful gelato before heading back to our hostel. We wandered a bit and ended up finding the Roman Theatre ruins which were cool to see, especially since it was night and they were all lit up.
Sunday we slept in and relaxed after our two really big days. We hit up the Campo dei Fiori to see some markets and look around. We also headed back to the Piazza Navona for people watching before getting our final gelato at Giolitti. We headed back to the hostel, made it through the thunderstorm that had hit Rome, and headed back to the airport (luckily the storm didn't last long and our plane was only delayed slightly).
It was a wonderful trip to see the Eternal City and I took a lot of pictures that will be up soon, but first I have to head to pick up Aaron at the Milan airport! He'll be here for a week and we'll see Milan, Torino, and Venice! I can't wait.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Swiss Visitors
Michelle, Me, and Janine at the Parco SempioneSo this past weekend I had some visitors from Switzerland. When I was in Europe in 2007 with Blue Lake International Southern Winds I had stayed with a family for four days in Switzerland and had since kept it pretty decent contact with my host sister Janine. So, she came down to Milan for the weekend with her sister Michelle. They'd never been to Milan before so we had a good time.
They got here Saturday and we went to the Duomo area where you can see the Duomo (of course), the Vittorio Emmanuel, and La Scala. We did some shopping (another popular activity around the Duomo) and had lunch. For dinner we went out with two of my friends of Sicilian style pizza al tracio (pizzia by the slice) at this place called Spontini which is so good. If you're ever in Milan go find it, it's fantastic.
Sunday we went back to the Duomo and actually went inside because there had been a really long line the day before. We walked around and saw some of the very fancy shopping, and then, because of the rain (molto pioggia) we went to the museums in the castle. We had lunch at Bar Magenta which is a rather historic bar that my language partner had taken me to previously and saw the inside of San Ambrogio. I'd never been inside and it's a very beautiful church. It's the oldest church in Milan and definitely worth a visit.
I had a great time with my host sisters but this weekend it's off to Rome. And then I have another visitor coming Monday...Aaron's coming to visit me! Yay!
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Bella Toscana
So I stole the title from the sequel to Under the Tuscan Sun except I used correct Italian grammar (the title of the sequel is Bella Tuscany and is definitely worth a read).
This trip was an IES sponsored trip which was awesome because all I bought all weekend was lunch. Yay! Also, it was led by one of my most favorite people at IES, Walter! Yay! We had classes off on Thursday as an end of midterms treat so we left Thursday morning and came back Saturday night.
THURSDAY
We started with a four hour bus ride. Joy. However, we arrived in Siena and had a guided tour. This time our guide spoke pretty good English so it didn't take as long to have the translations. He was also a lot less long winded than the guide we had in Aosta. We were given breaks a few times as well which was nice. We saw the Piazza del Campo, the political center of Siena where the hold the big horse race Siena has every year for which province is more adored by the Virgin Mary. We took a break here and ate some very good gelato while sitting in the square.
We also saw the church with St. Catherine's head (yes, you can really see the head. I believe my cousin Anna was really intrigued by this when she went there) which is San Domenico and the outside of the Duomo. We then climbed up this wall that was supposed to be the facade for a new church when Siena decided to try and expand their Duomo into the largest cathedral in the world (beating St. Peter's in Rome). However, the plague hit and nothing was finished. However, now you can climb it (for a price which IES covered for us, yay!) and see some beautiful views of Siena and the Tuscan countryside that surrounds it.
Siena is a small town so we then headed and checked into the hotel and relaxed until dinner.
FRIDAY
We woke up, had some breakfast, and headed to Montalcino where there's a castle/fortress we went to. We went up on the walls of the fortress and then tasted wine in the enoteca (wine club) in the castle. This wasn't covered by IES but there was a deal that we got to try a brunello that Montalcino is known for and it was only one euro. We then had time to explore the town of Montalcino and get some lunch. We basically saw some churches (the Duomo was closed for lunch when we got there but we hung out in the little park in front of it and took pictures of the beautiful fall colors).
After Montalcino we headed to a monastery nearby and got to hear the monks there doing their Gregorian chant. We actually then heard from a monk there who is originally from LA but just moved out to the monastery.
We left Montalcino and went to Pienza which is a small Renaissance town that was designed by Piccolomini! (a reference to a Blue Lake song for those that don't know). Turns out Piccolomini became Pope Pius II. We got to see a beautiful Tuscan sunset (so many Under the Tuscan Sun references...) and wander the town before going back to our hotel in Siena and having dinner.
SATURDAY
We packed the bus up (we jokingly said "upload" because Walter had misspoke and said "download" the bus instead of unload earlier on the trip) and went to Arezzo for the day. We went into San Francesco and saw these very famous frescos that I enjoyed. Other than that we just wandered the town. Saw the Duomo which had also just closed for lunch, had lunch with the RAs and Walter because we ran into them, and then got on a bus back to Milan.
It was a wonderful trip and Tuscany was so beautiful. I've come back to gray, cloudy Milan (we're supposed to have rain for four days in a row this week) and back to classes. I will be spending next weekend in Milan but am very excited because my host sister from St. Gallen, Switzerland during my 2007 European tour with the Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp International Southern Winds is coming with her other sister to visit me. Yay!
This trip was an IES sponsored trip which was awesome because all I bought all weekend was lunch. Yay! Also, it was led by one of my most favorite people at IES, Walter! Yay! We had classes off on Thursday as an end of midterms treat so we left Thursday morning and came back Saturday night.
THURSDAY
We started with a four hour bus ride. Joy. However, we arrived in Siena and had a guided tour. This time our guide spoke pretty good English so it didn't take as long to have the translations. He was also a lot less long winded than the guide we had in Aosta. We were given breaks a few times as well which was nice. We saw the Piazza del Campo, the political center of Siena where the hold the big horse race Siena has every year for which province is more adored by the Virgin Mary. We took a break here and ate some very good gelato while sitting in the square.
We also saw the church with St. Catherine's head (yes, you can really see the head. I believe my cousin Anna was really intrigued by this when she went there) which is San Domenico and the outside of the Duomo. We then climbed up this wall that was supposed to be the facade for a new church when Siena decided to try and expand their Duomo into the largest cathedral in the world (beating St. Peter's in Rome). However, the plague hit and nothing was finished. However, now you can climb it (for a price which IES covered for us, yay!) and see some beautiful views of Siena and the Tuscan countryside that surrounds it.
Siena is a small town so we then headed and checked into the hotel and relaxed until dinner.
FRIDAY
We woke up, had some breakfast, and headed to Montalcino where there's a castle/fortress we went to. We went up on the walls of the fortress and then tasted wine in the enoteca (wine club) in the castle. This wasn't covered by IES but there was a deal that we got to try a brunello that Montalcino is known for and it was only one euro. We then had time to explore the town of Montalcino and get some lunch. We basically saw some churches (the Duomo was closed for lunch when we got there but we hung out in the little park in front of it and took pictures of the beautiful fall colors).
After Montalcino we headed to a monastery nearby and got to hear the monks there doing their Gregorian chant. We actually then heard from a monk there who is originally from LA but just moved out to the monastery.
We left Montalcino and went to Pienza which is a small Renaissance town that was designed by Piccolomini! (a reference to a Blue Lake song for those that don't know). Turns out Piccolomini became Pope Pius II. We got to see a beautiful Tuscan sunset (so many Under the Tuscan Sun references...) and wander the town before going back to our hotel in Siena and having dinner.
SATURDAY
We packed the bus up (we jokingly said "upload" because Walter had misspoke and said "download" the bus instead of unload earlier on the trip) and went to Arezzo for the day. We went into San Francesco and saw these very famous frescos that I enjoyed. Other than that we just wandered the town. Saw the Duomo which had also just closed for lunch, had lunch with the RAs and Walter because we ran into them, and then got on a bus back to Milan.
It was a wonderful trip and Tuscany was so beautiful. I've come back to gray, cloudy Milan (we're supposed to have rain for four days in a row this week) and back to classes. I will be spending next weekend in Milan but am very excited because my host sister from St. Gallen, Switzerland during my 2007 European tour with the Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp International Southern Winds is coming with her other sister to visit me. Yay!
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Da Vinci's The Last Supper
Just a quick blog post to update that I got to go see Da Vinci's Last Supper at Santa Maria Delle Grazie today. It was a wonderful experience that I highly recommend to anybody coming to Milan. To see something that you've seen prints of and pictures of in textbooks up close is just amazing and I loved it. You can see the textures and where things are still fading away despite the many restorations.
I had an English guide with the ticket I got (I couldn't find any left directly through the ticket office so I had to find a third party that blocks out a few times a week to take people through) and that made the experience very informative and interesting.
So, definitely go see The Last Supper sometime in your lifetime. It's worth the trip.
I had an English guide with the ticket I got (I couldn't find any left directly through the ticket office so I had to find a third party that blocks out a few times a week to take people through) and that made the experience very informative and interesting.
So, definitely go see The Last Supper sometime in your lifetime. It's worth the trip.
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