Tunisia!! (Spring break, part 1)

For spring break I decided to go on the school-sponsored study trip through Tunisia. The trip's themes were Islam and democracy and the role of women in an Islamic culture. I am especially interested in Tunisia because it is the only Islamic country that offers equal legal rights for women. They were also the first Islamic country to ban polygamy. The country also runs with two languages: French and Arabic. Dates and olives are the two largest exports, and they trade primarily with Europe. Although freedom of opinion and expression is guaranteed by the Tunisian constitution, the government tightly controls the press and broadcasting. [See BBC profile] In addition, the presence of Carthage connects the area to Europe more dramatically than other North African or Middle Eastern countries.

So the first morning of our break we flew from Rome to Tunis, the capital of Tunisia. We went to the U.S. Embassy to meet the ambassador and have a question-and-answer session with a panel of State Department officials. We discussed things such as the role of the Tunisian president in their democratic process (he has been in power for 20 years and he won the last election by 95% of the votes) and the history of relations with the United States.
We went to check in at our hotel and enjoy a buffet dinner and then we all got back on the buses for a special evening activity. We went out to the seaside suburb of Sidi Bou Said to a 400-year-old Shisha bar. It was beautiful, and the group of 100 crowded into this lovely little place to drink tea and smoke the traditional shisha (known in the U.S. as hookah). The typical tea is green tea with mint leaves and almond flavoring and pignons (pine nuts), served boiling hot in little glasses a little bigger than a shot glass. Delicious, although impossible to hold for about 10 minutes until it cools down. Luckily, our hotel had a disco in the basement (interesting fact: The Green Mile, dubbed in German, was playing during all the techno music... weird), so everyone met there to end the day dancing!

Our breakfast the next day was the same food that we ended up having for breakfast every day this trip: fruit punch, corn flakes with hot milk and chocolate powder, and "3-minute boiled eggs" which I promptly smashed on the table thinking they were hard-boiled. Embarrassing.

On the second day we had lunch with 40 English-speaking Tunisian students from the University of Tunis. I sat next to a PhD candidate named AbdelWahed. We picked his brain throughout the meal although he didn't have too many questions for us since he had lived in Canada for two years. After lunch Abdel guided Mary and me through the Medina (markets) of Tunis helping us barter. I bought a beautiful embroidered blouse.

That evening we had the opportunity to attend the local Catholic mass. There are 10 million Tunisians; 99% are Muslim and only about 200 are Catholic. The chapel was very simple and beautiful and the mass was in French. After mass we returned to the hotel for dinner. Since Tunisia was a French colony, many of those influences still remain in their cooking. Last night we had crepes for dessert, tonight we had little "honey balls" although I don't know what their true name is. They were heavenly.

Megan and I visit the Cinque Terre!!

My best friend Megan came to see me this week! She flew in from St. Louis to tour around Rome with me, and head out on a weekend trip. To plan our trip we didn't look in Italy-in-6-hours tour books or Europe-in-3-days books. We scoured a book my cousin Danny gave me for Christmas: Rick Steve's Europe Through the Back Door. Now, Danny must know me pretty well to give me this book, or else he just has really good taste :) But its not too surprising to find out that my dream destinations this semester are not the usual ones. I am afraid that I am not going to make it to Paris or Madrid, Munich or Stockholm. As beautiful as I'm sure those places are, they are going to have to wait for another trip. As far as this semester, I'm sticking to Italy, with Spring Break in Tunisia and a possible weekend trip to Budapest. Anyways, Europe Through the Back Door doesn't cover any of the usual places that tour books cover. It only shares about "back-door" places that really expose the true culture of an area. In Italy, the focus is on the Dolomites and on the Cinque Terre.
The Cinque Terre is a collection of five little towns in Liguria. We decided to stay in the smallest town, Corniglia, which also happens to be the only one not on the water. It is on top of a mountain right next to the water. This area is unbelievabely beautiful. A trail winds between all five towns, or a train totters by once an hour.

A remarkable thing about Liguria in general, and the Cinque Terre in particular is it's pesto. Yes, I said pesto. This is the birthplace of pesto in all its loveliness. And let me tell you- it- is- lovely. We have been eating pesto on crackers since we returned, which has only been a few days, but its awesome pesto.

Anyways, I thought it might be a good choice to chronicle the trip by what we ate, since this food is the best I've had in all of Italy. When we arrived, we walked around Corniglia and asked around for rooms to stay in. We saw a few, all were between 55 and 60 euro per night, and we decided on a room with a beautiful view for 60. When we got settled in, we walked through town and bought panini to eat on a bench. These panini were good, but not the focal event of the day by any means. The room that we got rested above a restaurant, probably with the best view in town for lunch. We were told that dinner began at 7:00 and we kept it in the back of our minds. When 7:00 rolled around, we weren't very interested in going very far since it is very dark far away from a city (go figure) so we strolled into our ground level. The prices were about the same as in Rome, except that a plate of penne pomodoro (penne with tomato sauce) in Rome costs about what penne alla polpa di granchio (penne with lump crabmeat) costs in Corniglia. Alot of the seafood requires an order of at least two, to get proportions right I assume. Megan and I ordered the seafood risotto, which came to our table in a crockpot. This was probably the best dish I have had in Italy so far. Risotto with clams, shrimp, mussels, prawns... it was heaven.
The next day we had pesto gnocchi and swordfish alla liguria for lunch in Vernazza. As I already mentioned that this is the hometown of pesto, the loveliness of this dish can be assumed to its fullest extent. The swordfish was delicious. It was a steak grilled to perfection with tomatoes, olives, capers, and olive oil on it. Sooooo good.

For dinner, we traveled to Manarola. We ate at a beautiful little restaurant there. Manarola had beautiful restaurants, at least from how little we saw. We got swordfish carpaccio for our appetizer. We really only went to this particular restaurant for this dish. Working at Francesca's Famiglia back in Barrington, our carpaccio con avocado is my favorite dish, and this was the first time I have ever encountered it in Italy. This swordfish carpaccio was delicious, the flavor of the fish was so distinctive and delicate. For our pasta, Megan got another gnocci pomodoro this time and I got pesto ravioli.
Those are the most memorable meals that we had for me. Delicious. Yum.

Vesuvius erupts again!!!!!

I signed up for a day trip to Pompeii led my my professor Dr. Nicholson. He teaches my Art in Rome class as well as my Baroque Art class. Before we left he warned us about the recent volcanic activity with Pompeii. Volcanologists were predicting an eruption at any time. We read the articles and listened to him, but didn't take the warnings too seriously. We took a bus down to Naples early in the morning to get started. We went through Pompeii, houses and piazzas, gardens and brothels. That was when the alarms started to ring and the ground started to shake.... just kidding! Haha! But I did have alot of fun with Photoshop!!

One really interesting thing about Pompeii is that biologists have recreated the gardens as they were before the eruption. All of the same flowers, fruits, even the colors are supposedly the same as they once were. Thats pretty impressive science!

The coolest thing about Pompeii, what differentiates it from other ancient ruins, is the body casts. When the first excavations were happening, the archeologists realized that the pockets of air they found with human bones at the bottom were actually bubbles that were the exact shapes of human bodies! So when they found a pocket of air, instead of digging around more, they would fill the pocket with plaster, let it dry, and then chip away the lava from around it. Some of the impressions were so precise that I could see belts and pleats in clothing! One body was actually screaming, and I could see his teeth!

We also saw the bath building. The towel hooks were still on the walls! The bath building has the oldest known person-made dome ceiling. It has a hole at the top, just like the Pantheon, but I think it was designed to let the steam out.
All-in-all, Pompeii was sweet. Thank goodness we survived the trip! Haha!! I am still planning on going back to actually see Naples at some point before I leave. I have to try this pizza place I'm reading about in Eat, Pray, Love and see Herculaneum, which my Uncle Ron and Aunt Cindy have convinced me to see ;)

Venice- Carnivale!!!

This past weekend I traveled to Venice with my friend Lauren and her mother, Suzanne. Lauren and I met back in St. Louis where she lived at Grace House Catholic Worker down the street from Karen House Catholic Worker where I spend time. So Lauren emailed me last Tuesday asking if I would like to join her in Venice for Carnivale, and naturally, I accepted.
We took the train out on Friday morning and went to our hotel to settle in before we set out to explore the city. We stayed at a beautiful hotel outside of the city called the Villa Odino. We settled into our room and then got on the local train into (or rather out-to) Venice. We didn't see much of the carnivale partying, but word on the street was that due to the weather there were a lot fewer people venturing to the festivities. We only made it to one sight: the Scuola of San Rocco. It was beautiful. It is called the "Sistine Chapel of Venice." It is filled with huge paintings by Tintoretto. We wanted to see other museums and churches, but we did not account for how incredibly hard the city is to navigate. Nearly every street is only two blocks long, and they all just dead-end. We tried to visit the Peggy Guggenheim collection for hours and when we finally got close enough that it was a possibility it had already closed. We did see alot of beautiful art galleries and shops though. I got my first major purchase (major being over €5), a glass dish that now holds my change on my desk. It is beautiful.
All-in-all, Venice is beautiful, but it is so hard to get around that I don't think I'll go back. And the gondola rides cost about €70 per person... translation: $100 for a gondola ride for one person. Sounds like a rip-off to me! Also, the water-taxies cost about $10 per ride. They offer a year-pass for €200, so if you don't buy that then you are clearly a tourist, and a sucker I guess. What a bummer!