Aquileia, Grado, Ravenna, Classe

Let me just start of my saying, last weekend nearly killed me. I've never been so stressed out and intimidated in my life. I wanted to crawl into a hole until it was all over. It was an excursion for my Late Antique/ Early Byzantine class taught by the ridiculous Jan Gadeyne. Thankfully my roommate is in this class with me, otherwise I doubt I would have survived.

Aquileia is above Venice, very close to Slovakia, so we had to take an overnight train thursday night (and a full day of classes) that left from the Tiburtina station around 10:30pm. I've never been on an overnight train and, after experiencing one, would prefer never to do it again. Thankfully, I roomed with Kate and Joe who were cracking me up telling ridiculous "scary stories". The cabins are like closets. There's barely any room for even two people to stand on the floor. The beds are like bunk beds, except there's 3, stacked to the side on the wall. Kate was on the very top, I was in the middle, and Joe took the bottom bunk. We didn't fall asleep until maybe 12:30. We had to be up and ready by 6:40am to be able to quickly jump off the train by 6:48am because it only was stopping for like 5 minutes. At 3am, Joe all of a sudden wakes up and tells us we gotta get up and get off the train and that we must have slept in or something. I thought he was pulling our leg. I had been awake since I couldn't sleep very well. And Kate was all confused and I kept telling her "No" "He's just kidding, Kate it's 3am, go back to bed". Then there's silence for a minute and Joe goes "Guys i'm sorry it's only 3. I'm so sorry guys." He hadn't been kidding at all. haha.

So anyway when our alarm finally did go off around 6:15am we all got ourselves ready to get off the train, which went smoothly. But once the train pulled away, it was go time.

A little side note on Jan Gadeyne. He's pretty much one of the most intense professors I've ever had. He from Belgium and loves to boast about how he had these intense German professors and how he survived all these hard exams and blah blah blah. On top of that he's a sarcastic prick. He loves to insult. It's like a favorite past time. And sometimes it's funny but realistically it's always a jerk comment that isn't appropriate coming from a professor. And he's somewhat bi-polar and on this trip we got the extreme of his bad side...

So anyway, we take a bus to Aquileia that took less than 10 minutes and walked to a church and sat in the cold for an hour while he lectured at us about crap I can't even remember or decipher from my notes. Awesome. We then are a loud to eat breakfast we only find a little shop that has cappucino and pastries so I was hungry 5 seconds later. Then we sat outside a bit more while he lectured about more stuff and then FINALLY the church opened. It was actually kind of cool inside. The whole point of this trip was to see Mosaics. They are the best in the world in Ravenna but also in the other cities we visited too. This church had an entire mosaic floor still intact. Of course I didn't take any pictures while in Aquileia but it wasn't as interesting as it may sound. After the church we took a long, hot (mother nature heard my plea a little too well), and rather boring walking tour of some of the ruins like a necropolis, the forum was was barely noticeable, old harbour and houses which was a dried up stream with a few ruins, then we saw a church with another mosaic floor.

So that was Aquileia. Next we boarded a bus that took us 15 minutes down the road to Grado. We had lunch first and I had a pasta dish with a fanstastic tomato-based sauce and then we got some gelato afterward. Grado is actually really beautiful and a little expensive because I guess it can get touristy but it was;t crowded or anything. They have a little harbor that comes into the village and that was cool. It's in the same lagoon as Venice.















So we pretty much just visited early-Christian churches and the Baptistery of Grado which were again full of original mosaics and some still had their mosaic floors intact. Which was cool to see and actually be able to walk on one. The other places having you suspended on the floors on clear floors so you can see below you. After Grado we got back on the bus and took an hour long drive to Ravenna.



This is the coastline while leaving Grado.

So we arrive in Ravenna around maybe 8ish and we're all exhausted. The hotel is really nice though, except our shower was really small, like a closet and I kept shutting the water off with my elbow. Oh well.



This is the only picture I managed to take of Ravenna besides the hotel room. It was that kind of weekend...



That's my roomie Kate!



Our sink was outside of the bathroom. haha.



We had dinner at a nice place that was reasonably priced and we headed back to the hotel to work on our oral presentation. Did I mention we had to present our research papers? On things relating specifically to Ravenna? Things that, until that very moment we were about to present, we had never seen before? We were all dreading Ravenna, which should have been the highlight to our trip but was rather the focal point of our doom. We didn't know how hard he was going to really be on us. He told us we had to know all our sources for each bit of info we would present and to expect being constantly interrupted during our presentations to be questioned by him. We'd find out the next morning just how serious he was...

So the next morning he of course hits the ground running. By the way, he's known for walking blocks ahead of his class and never looking back to make sure you can see where he's going and where he turned. It's REALLY annoying... So the first two presentations you would think were more like verbal flagellation. He wouldn't let them finish a thought, and he shredded them apart for ridiculous things. He embarrassed them in front of us, making them sound unprepared and correcting them on every little thing. The weekend pretty much just went like that. He'd loosen up for the presentations at the end of the day but be a total nazi for the morning presentations. And of course I was part of the Sunday morning presentations. So Saturday night my roommate and I stayed in our hotel and with fear motivating us to prepare for the worst we went over our papers again and again. So much for enjoying Ravenna. So the morning came and of course he ripped me to shreds and the girl before and after me took verbal beatings. He was particular about what he felt needed to be said when. He stopped you before you had a chance to make a point to tell you you're wrong. He made you skip around in your presentation because he wanted to hear one thing before another. I did the architecture of San Vitale. And he said I made it confusing to understand the interior. Thankfully people came up to me afterward and said they thought I said it exactly the same way he said it after he tears you apart them takes over and re-lectures your paper. Thankfully Kate was able to handle it well enough and although he told her to not talk about certain things and talk slower but make the presentation shorter but include key points she managed to do it all. It didn't help he was on a tight time schedule that day because we had to be at certain places at certain times and there was a whole bunch of us who still had to present. So some people didn't have any problem with their presentations because he was happy some moments then would get nasty at others. He might also have favorites but even the people he seemed to prefer over the semester got attacked ruthlessly. Some people even said they were on the verge of tears. And you could see it in their faces that he needed to back off and that it wasn't a learning experience if they're feeling attacked and humiliated.

So needless to say the weekend wasn't all that great. I was so happy when we got on our train to go back home. Even afterward I still felt frazzled and nervous from all the built up stress that loomed over me the entire weekend. At least it's over!! It's crazy to think that next week is finals and that weekend my family will be here! I feel like the end of the semester went by so fast and soon I'll be back in the States, graduated, and working like I did before I decided to go back to college to finish my degree. Time really does fly. And it was the best decision I ever made.

My Roman Easter

I had plans to do all the festive things one is suppose to do it Rome the week of Easter. However, I had a TON and a half of school work to do and everything fell through. I almost didn't even have time to spare for a real Easter dinner. But luckily I busted my butt and got to have a really awesome potluck dinner! My friend Victoria decided to have it in her apartment which is directly underneath mine. The people that came were Victoria, obviously, her roommate Nicole, my roommate Ashley, Nat, Holiday and her Italian friend Alessandro. Kate was away that weekend in Sorrento and Capri.

So the main course was baked ziti that Victoria made which was sooooo good. Holiday made her grandmother's soup which was also really good. Ashley made a Jewish dish that I can't remember the name of! Ah! But I really really liked it and want to make it for my peeps at home. So good. Nicole was studying at school (which I should have been doing too haha) and came a little later but she had some dessert cookies and nutella for after dinner. The boys, of course, brought the wine. And what did I make? Hrudka. I cold have easily gone out and bought something but no. I was determined to bring something Slovakian. The processes was totally ridiculous and I was certain it wasn't going to turn out but by some kind of miracle it did. And of couse I took pictures throughout the process to show you all:



I made the unsweetened kind because I couldn't find vanilla extract in the grocery store. I want to try it sweetened maybe next Easter and see if it tastes like a dessert or something. Anyway, so it called for a dozen eggs, salt, and milk. You mixed it together and put it into a double-boiler, which I kind of made my own with the very few kitchen things we have. And it's suppose to release whey from the curds and basically look like scabbled eggs:



Then the fun part comes. It said to place the hrudka onto cheesecloth and fold it into a ball and tie it over the sink to drain for 4 hours.... So cheesecloth was not the easiest thing to find in Italy so instead I bought knee high stocking and put my hrudka in one of the knee highs and tied it to the drying rack over the sink and...well:



Hey, it worked. haha. So I let it drain for like 6 or 7 hours and it never released enough of the whey to firm up so I eventually untied it and put it on a bowl with paper towels underneath and stuck it in the fridge overnight. The next morning it really wasn't much better. So I cut it out of the stocking and let it sit some more. Then I read that someone would brown it a bit in the oven so I stuck it in there for like 15 minutes. That seemed to dry it out better. So when it was time to get things ready and head over to Victoria's, I knew it was the moment of truth and had to cut the hrudka...



Luckily, it stayed together!



I cut up as much as I could fit on the plate. Success!



This is all the food we had, minus the soup that was still on the stove and the cookies. I added a little espresso cup full of salt to the plate so people could spinkle it on the hrudka.

And of course I didn't take pictures of everyone so I'm stealing this picture from Victoria. haha. Thanks Victoria!



This is everyone except Victoria who is taking the picture. From left to right it's Sandro (as I called him), Holiday, Nat, Ashley, Nicole, and moi.

And here is a picture of me and the lovely Miss Victoria while we were out one night watching a live band at a bar called Rebel Pub or something like that.



So although I was annoyed that school work managed to ruin one of the most important holidays ever to see in Rome, I was happy that I got to spend my Easter with awesome people and have a chance to relax a bit before being submerged back into research...

Siena and Firenze! (Florence)

Hey everyone! So after Spring Break the semester got super intense for me with all my art history classes with writing papers and creating presentations and taking weekend class excursions. I can't believe I only have a week o the semester to go and I'm just now able to take a second to update you on my life! The past month and a half has been a blur but I'll at least tell you about Siena and Florence, Easter, and my very horrendous trip to Acquileia, Grado, Ravenna, and Classe that happened just last weekend. Alright here we go:

I went to Siena and Florence on the weekend of March 12-14. We had to be up and down at the piazza near our residence by 6:15am to take a bus to Siena. I took to take a nice long 3 hour nap on the bus before arriving at 9:30. It was a bit cool but soooo pretty! It's a medieval town like Todi, which I went to during my first week in Italy, but I think I like Siena a lot more because it was a little bigger and less in the middle of nowhere. Oh and also we didn't have to hike a mountain or take a lift to get to the main street like we did for Todi. haha. So here we saw San Domenico, Museo dell'Opera del Duomo (which has Duccio's Maesta), Palazzo Pubblico to look at frescos by Lorenzetti, then we had free time to walk around a bit before getting on the bus again and heading to Florence.







These were protesters talking a stroll through Siena. I took this picture standing right outside the doors of San Domenico. I forgot what they were protesting exactly but I thin they were left wing supporters.

Also, in San Domenico, there is the head of St. Catherine. Her body is in Rome near that church that's to the left behind the pantheon with the elephant obelisk...I can't think of the name at the moment. But anyway you can't see her body in Rome but in Siena you can see her actual head in a reliquary box. If I'm remembering my saints correctly I think she was a bit of a nutty and people now believe she might have had slight schizophrenia but she was actually an influential figure in Christianity. Who would have thought?









San Domenico from on top another hill. Siena is another very hilly town, like Todi, and my legs were getting a major workout going up and down all over the place.



The Duomo of Siena



Inside the Duomo. Siena's colors are black and white stripes. So the entire interior looked like this and I've never seen a cathedral like it or since. It was very cool!



This is on the floor of the Duomo. It's all the animals that represent the major cities of Italy.



This is the choir room of the cathedra and there was a display of all these different hand-painted books of hymns that the choir would use to sing from. They're really big books and so detailed with hundreds of pages I just can't believe how much time and energy they must have put into each page.





For all my fellow art nerds, I couldn't resist taking a picture of Ambrogio Lorenzetti's Allegory of Good and Bad Government. For some reason I really like the complexity of this fresco. It goes all around the room except on the fourth wall. It was really amazing to see it in person.

So after seeing lots of artwork, which I only took a few pictures here and there since I felt like I lost my steam with all the picture taking I did Tunisia, we ate lunch near Piazza del Campo then headed back toward to bus to go to Florence.

We left Siena around 4ish and got to Florence around 5 or 5:30. We checked into our hotel and ate dinner around the corner of our hotel. I think I had a pasta dish of some kind. I can't remember! But Florence is very tourist friendly and speak English almost too well for my taste. It didn't feel quite as authentically Italian as I had hoped.

Pictures of the Hotel room. This time I stayed in a triple.







Our bathroom had no shower curtain. I asked the porter (front desk receptionist) if maybe it was missing a glass panel or something because there was no shower curtain rod to even put curtain up since there was a window in the way. But he said just shower without one and don't worry about it because the floor has a drain. Needless to say I did not enjoy taking showers...



The Duomo and Baptistery. I wrote a paper on one of the 3 sets of doors that are on the baptistery. I did Ghiberti's second set of door that face the Cathedral and are 10 completely gilded panels. The ones there now are copies, and the originals are going to be put on a permanent display to preserve them. The ones you can see in this picture are Ghiberti's first set of doors with 28 panels. And opposite of those doors are Pisano's doors which also have 28 panels and were the first ones hung on the Baptistery. Incase anyone cares...



Ghiberti's 1st set of doors



And the 2nd set, which I wrote my paper one.





This is the only restored panel on display at the nearby museum.



This is Donatello's workshop which is behind the Duomo. It's the building with the bust on it.







This is Santa Croce which has a munch of tombs of famous people like Michelangelo, Machiavelli, and Galileo. Of course most of mine didn't turn out so I stole ones from Wikipedia. haha



Michelangelo's Tomb



Galileo's Tomb



Machiavelli's Tomb. This is actually my own photo. It kind of turned out ok.

There's also a memorial to Dante who people felt would have also deserved a spot along the greats buried here. However he's buried in Ravenna, where he had pretty much no connections with and it makes no sense at all why he's there. But I did get to see his tomb. Looks nice at least.

After viewer a bunch of artwork that day we ended with a visit to the Accademia which is where Michelangelo's David is displayed. You weren't a loud to take pictures. But honestly you can find pictures of it all over the internet anyway. There's not much in the Accedemia other than the David. It used to be a workshop for sculptures and on a side there is a long room filled with plaster casts and busts and all sorts of interesting sculptures that were marked up and used as learning tools to create copies and learn how to sculpt. It was really interesting to see them. Also as you walk into the Accademia towards David there are unfinished works of Michelangelo (shocker), and these are some of the 12 prophets he was suppose to sculpt. I actually really loved these because it's like going to visit Michelangelo's shop as if he's still alive and working and seeing his process and how he approaches each piece differently. The David is remarkable and mind blowing but I was really intrigued by the unfinished works because it shows you what you can't otherwise fully appreciate about how he can get to a finished product such as the David where he's got an amazing ability to show softness of the skin carved out of marble. I could talk about it forever but it's worth seeing, and don't just walk by it, you have to read it for awhile. Trust me it's worth the frustration of getting through the crowd to be up close.





So after the Accademia we were free to wander around and of course you'll end up at the leather markets one way or another. I took pictures but it doesn't do it justice. It's crazy busy and everyone wants to sell you their crap for "a veddy good price". Florence at night is actually fun and lively and there's shops all over and restaurants to eat at anyway.

The next day we checked out of the hotel and visited a few insignificant places before arriving at the Uffizi for our 11am appointment. Our professor apparently knew someone so we got in for free in the back door and had to walk through side rooms before we arrived in the museum. So I have no idea where the real entrance is. I loved the Uffizi, of course. It had tons of key works from a bunch of different time periods. It would take forever to look through it but obviously it's worth a tour guide to weed out the good stuff.



To the far right is the edge of the Uffizi. It's a horse-shoe shaped building kind of. This is where the David was originally suppose to be and it was unveiled here when first shown in public. Although it's a direct copy and accurate in size, it looks a lot smaller when standing outside. Which was surprising.



This is the view of the canal from inside the Uffizi

After the Uffizi we had time for lunch so he went down to cross the bridge in the picture above.



The building with the window facing the bridge, on the left, is the window I took the picture from of the canal.



This guy was hanging out on the sidewalk as we passed by and I couldn't resist taking a picture. Totally made my day. haha.

After lunch we went to a few other places: The Brancacci Chapel and Santa Maria Novella, which is pictured below.



So that was pretty much it for my Siena / Florence trip. I can't remember too many details since it was a month ago but really it was heavily loaded with visits to churches and museums and frescos, frescos, frescos. I did love it, though and it was nice to be in a city that's small enough to walk the full width of in only about 45 minutes at a leisurely pace. The amount of artwork to see will make your eyes glaze over, that's for sure. But very worth it!