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Spring Break Plans (March 2-11, 2007)
I am still doing research on this, but have some of it figured out already. Basically it is going to consist of flying to Bulgaria on March 2nd, visiting Ina's relatives and seeing Sofia and then flying to Greece mid the next week and traveling around some of the islands and Athens, finishing by flying to Rome or Milan on March 11th. Should be a very interesting and fun trip!
Last weekend (February 16-19) was rather busy. I'll outline each of my trips below:
Siena, Italy (February 16, 2007)
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Our one class trip for the semester was to Siena and San Gimignano. Siena I'm sure most of you have heard of at some point and as well as being vicious rivals with Florence since the Middle Ages, is most famous for its yearly horse race: Palio. This race involves ten horses from the seventeen Siena contrades (or neighbordhoods). Each contrade is named after an animal and has their own colors, celebrates holidays together and overall "sticks together." The event is VERY competitive and thousands of people come to watch the 45 second event.
Siena is also home to "La Basilica Cateriniana di San Domenico"
This church has a few rather strange properties: first, it holds the head of St. Catherine as well as her thumb, both of which are on display within the church--creepy. Her body is actually buried in Rome, separate from her head and thumb.
Of course no Italian town would be complete this it's own Duomo...
This Duomo was rather interesting. It is one of the only churches to be done in black and white marble inside and due to a planned expansion it was to be the largest church in Italy. However, the black plague struck Siena in the 13th century and construction of the expansion was halted, only later to be turned into a parking lot:
Inside:
Piazza Del Campo in Siena:
This is where the thousands of people gather for the Palio.
There were some really beautiful flowers outside of a flower shop, so I took some pictures:
As well as some fruit outside a shop:
San Gimignano, Italy (February 16, 2007)
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Also on our class trip was San Gimagnano.
San Gimagnano is one of the only areas in the Tuscan area that produces white white: Vernaccia. The town itself is home to 14 towers that can be seen as you approach the city. In the 13th century, this town was home to over 70 towers belonging to churches and family castles making for a fantastic skyline. In the 13th century, almost all were destroyed when the Medici family (I believe??) declared war on this area and destroyed many of them.
There is a fabulous view to be had from this city, however, as it over looks some of the Tuscan valley.
There are walls surrounding most of the city which can be climbed.
The city also (supposedly) has the best gelato in the world... however, the store that claims this (and the people who have had it agree) was closed for construction during the time we were there.
Milan, Italy (February 17, 2007)
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Ah, Milan, the fashion capital of the world (and the 2nd largest city in Italy). Definitely a major industrial city, but it has some charm. Ervis and I made the trek from Florence by train to Milan and then headed to the Duomo area where one of the largest shopping areas is found.
Above is Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, one of the oldest shopping malls. It is home to shops of many of the world's top labels, Prada, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, etc. It's a pretty neat shopping center and also has a place to wish for good luck:
The floor mosaic represents arms of four Italian cities, Milan - red cross on white ground; Rome - the wolf, Florence - the lily; and Turin. - the bull. Follow tradition and spin your heels three times on the most "delicate" parts of the bull. Legend says that revolving three times on one leg placed exactly in that position brings good luck and fortune. Of course we tried had to try it...
Next we visited the Milan Duomo...
The facade was under construction, but we entered the church (which happens to be the second largest cathedral in the world)...
The Cathedral was very nice, but after seeing so many of these already they tend to lose their "amazing" feel. It had some very nice stained glass, and a creepy statue which apparently is the most prized piece of art in the cathedral:
Otherwise, did some shopping (mostly at Zara who still had a ton of nice clearance items) and then hopped on the train to go to Mantova where we were staying.
Mantova, Italy (February 17-19, 2007)
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Mantova is about a 2 hour train ride east of Milan. The original plan was to go back to Milan the next day, but after determining how close we were to Venice and knowing that Carnevale was happening there, we decided to change our plans.
We stayed at a friend of Ervis' apartment. Mantova has that 'small-town' feel to it. The stay was incredible and the hosts were overaccomadating. Unfortunately the only languages they spoke were Albanian and Italian so Ervis ended up translating, or at least doing most of the talking. They did have satellite TV, which received channels from the Balkan area so I had the opportunity to watch a few Bulgarian TV channels (Zdrave and Evrope TV).
The next day we bought tickets to Venice and hopped on the train.
Verona, Italy (February 18, 2007)
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On our way to Venice, we had a train switch in Verona. Verona as some of you may know is the setting for Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. It is also home to the "Arena" which, built in 30AD (!!!!) is the third largest in Italy. I have to claim that this is the oldest man-made place I have ever been to.
It was quite an amazing site even though most of the upper ring was destroyed in an earthquake in the 13th century.
We then ventured to see if we could find the supposed "Romeo" and "Giulietta" homes. After some struggle, we were able to find Romeo's home:
Not very exciting, two signs:
*yawn* boring.
Giulieta's home was so exciting we walked right past it without seeing it:
The inside of the tunnel leading to the supposed "balcony" (now restaurant) is lined with notes professing love between various couples:
It is also good luck to rub Giulieta's right breast:
(I swear!) Nothing bad (or particularly good) has happened to me yet, so I guess it worked.
Venice, Italy (February 18, 2007)
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Beautiful city, streets full of water, please advise.
OK, I lied about nothing particularly bad happening. My train story to follow is not anything of a "fun time." Since we decided to drop off in Verona for two hours on our way to Venice (I could only recommend about 45 minutes so you can see the Arena, skip everything else), we hopped on another train to go to Venice. On the way there, we could not find a place to sit other than in the aisles. Not exactly a pleasant trip since every 30 seconds someone was trying to walk past you. When the ticket inspector came around, I figured I was fine since I had bought the ticket to Venice and validated it. He then informed me that because the ticket was for a Tren Ordinare and not intercity, that I would need to pay a supplement.
I thought to myself "ok, no big deal, should be a few Euro." Ervis had lost his ticket in Verona so he had to purchase a new one for E10.50. When the inspector informed me that the total was "dodici euro cinquanta" it took me a moment to figure out that it was E12.50 for the "supplement" and not a "few Euro." I paid the man and then wondered why I ended up paying over E20 for my ticket and Ervis paid only E10.50. Oh well.
We got into Venice over a bridge to the city as the train station is on the island. WOW, what a beautiful entrance. The water is a magnificent blue/green color and all the boats, etc make an absolutely gorgeous view. When arriving into Venice, we got out of the train station, noticed that there were a fair number of people, but nothing to be alarmed about (due to Carnavale, which is an event that happens every year in Venice and usually brings thousands of people).
We crossed the bridge to enter into the main area of Venice and started our walked towards Piazza San Marco. We soon realized why many people take the public water buses. Twisting throughout tiny, crowded alleyways, we followed what seemed like thousands of people towards what we were hoping would someday be San Marco (in all honestly we really thought we were following a bunch of tourists into some secluded area of Venice to be robbed or something--the route didn't seem to make much sense and never seemed to end).
We finally made it to Piazza San Marco only to discover that we were not the only ones that wanted to be there
Now, I have seen hordes of people before, but this was INSANE. I am not surprised that Venice is sinking at 2.5" / decade, it probably sinks quite a bit with all these people standing over this swamp they call a city.
We didn't stick around for the concert in San Marco and decided to head towards the shore, along the way we saw quite a few characters:
The side facing the Grand Canal was great. Still full of people, especially over the bridges, but at least you could breathe.
OK, maybe not. From the shore you could see quite a few boats and ferries boating people around. Across from San Marco was Basilica di San Giorgio Maggiore:
Shortly after we left there and went towards the Venetian Arsenal.
Caught some pictures of more Carnavale participants:
(This is Ina's favorite picture I think of all time...) and ran into some locals having their own, more private celebration:
As well as some dances:
After some small purchases, we made our way back to the train station, a few hours ahead of our scheduled train (7:49pm). We had to make a connection again in Verona to go back to Mantova. We got back around 5:30, so we tried to catch the 5:51. We waited at the binario for the train to come, they made an announcement (in Italian) that the train would be 5 minutes late. We waited, about 10 minutes later a train showed up showing "Verona" on the side (it was a massive, double decker train). A few people asked if this was going to Verona, since it appeared to be, we said yes. We looked at the sign for the Binario and it said it was going somewhere else and was not departing for another 25 minutes. We asked the police officer if this was going to Verona as it indicated and he said no, but offered no assistance.
We tried as hard as we could to find a train official with no luck. We finally found the conductor, who when asked if it was going to Verona, said no (even though it STILL said Verona on the side on the LCD). We determined after looking at the train schedule on the board that we had somehow missed the train. The next train was the one we were planning to take originally and was leaving in two hours. We decided to look around for a little while longer around the train station area and took some night shots from the bridge:
We crawled back into the train station about 7:05 whic at this point was incredibly busy with people wanting to leave Venice. We looked at the board and saw that a train was leaving at 7:07. We RAN across the station to see if we could catch the train, saw it was still there and tried to get in. Now this is where I wish I would have had my camera out. I have NEVER seen a bus, car, boat, train, or anything as full as that train was. There was not a single bit of room in any car for myself and definitely not for myself and Ervis. We stood there in disgust as the train rolled away.
We went back to check the boards again only to find that we had misread the original train schedule (since it was Sunday) and there was not another train to Verona until 9:09pm. The last train departing from Verona to Mantova was 8:40pm, which we needed to make unless we wanted to sleep in the train station. Long story short, we eventually found that we could take a Milan train that was going through Verona, get off there and catch our train to Mantova with about 5 minutes to spare.
Bologne, Italy (February 19, 2007)
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OK I can't really count that I've been here, but we stopped here for a few minutes on our way to Florence from Mantova.
Flowers!
We now have flowers blooming in our garden! Spring is here ;) (well at least in Florence)
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