Florence

Florence this weekend was pretty dang awesome. There were some sweeter parts than others, so I'll give you the low-down on the good stuff:

-I Fratellini, the best restaurant in town. They only serve panini and wine, and they also don't have any tables, but the three (of four) meals I ate here this weekend were well worth the curb. Actually, the curb enhanced it. My favorite panino that I tried here would have to be the "18" or the Salami and Carciofi with added capers... YUM. It was heavenly. And this place was cheap, to boot: panino and medio glass of wine for 3.80. Not bad, not bad at all.

-Grom, the best gelateria in the world. Since this place holds the local title (unofficially) of best gelato in Florence, and Florence holds the official title of best gelato city in the world, my deduction is that this place takes the cake. Its fairly new, caters to mostly locals, and is extremely hard to find. It uses all organic, local, in-season ingredients. I had pear and cinnamon. Delicious.

-The Academia, home to Michelangelo's David. This museum was interesting, but I didn't have enough time to spend here. My favorite part was walking through the corridor with the semi-finished Michelangelo's. Dr. Nicholson told us about this. Apparently Michelangelo's approach to sculpture derived from his belief that figures lived inside these blocks of marble, trying to escape, and it was his job to help them out. Looking at these unfinished pieces really looks like the bodies are trying to release themselves from the block of stone. Pretty cool, if you ask me.

-The Uffizi, one of the sweetest museums in the world. This pretty much doesn't need much explanation. Botticelli's Birth of Venus and Springtime both hang here, and they are much more impressive in person.

-The Pitti Palace, the old castle of a chain of Florence's ruling families, including the Medici's. This place was insane. I saw only three galleries, but they were beautiful, and not very well attended, at least when I was there.

Yay Florence! I didn't see everything I would have liked to here... if I have the opportunity I will definitely return!

Classes this week...

Since I am taking two on-site classes, I spent three days on-site this week (one is a make-up for the Papal Audience next Wednesday). My professor for both of these classes is Dr. Nicholson, who is awesome. He knows everything about Rome! On Tuesday (and Friday), my Baroque Art class went to the Vatican. We studied St. Peter's Square and St. Peter's Basillica. I learned alot, most interestingly, I learned about the 4 piers surrounding the dome in the basillica. I didn't realize that the statues surrounding the altar symbolized the four most important relics that are (or were) in the church. I especially liked the statue of St. Longinus, and I liked learning about his story because I didn't know much before.

Wednesday my Art in Rome class went to the Roman Forum. I don't really know what to say about the forum without saying it all, which would take a long time, so I'll spare you. I'm trying to scan in the image from our textbook of the before/after forum... its pretty crazy. I did see where Julius Caesar was killed! Heyah! It pretty much looks like a stone floor. Haha.

I saw Pope Benedict!

On Sunday Brooke, Mary, Kyle, and I went to the Porta Portese Market in Trastevere. This flea market goes from about 8 am to noon. We left the JFRC campus at about 7 am and waited for the 990 for about an hour before it actually came. We were extremely cold by this point, and after our trips on the 990 and 280 again we were still cold. So alas, my first purchase was a pair of fleece gloves for €1. They were well worth their value just that day.

This market was huge. I have no idea how far we got through it. I never saw anything that looked remotely like an end. The deeper we went the wider it got though... it was one street wide at the beginning and four by the time we turned back around. This place had really interesting people-watching because it was filled with mostly locals and few tourists. We all had fun practicing our Italian bartering although we didn't buy much. The gloves were the biggest and most influential purchase of the day! :)

Actually, Brooke bought something else very worthwhile. We stopped at this food booth, obviously because they had free samples, which were delicious!!! They offered these little sesame crackers that looked like dog biscuits with this kind of pepper tapenade. It was red, oily, and spicy. They were so delicious that she bought some with the little crackers that they made as well for €5. We ate it for lunch, and it was gone by the next day. We are planning to return to the market simply to find this awesome food.

We left the market a little before 11 to make to St. Peter's Square for the Angelus Prayer. The Angelus Prayer happens every Sunday that the Pope is in Rome. We heard about it at school so we meandered over the Tiber to check it out. When we got there, we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. There were (according to the news) over 100,000 people there. It just so happened that we walked into a huge protest. Apparently, according to Catholic Online, the Pope was banned from speaking at a local public university. He was scheduled to speak last week but there was a group of students who threatened violent protests if he showed up. So the Vicar for the Diocese of Rome called "all believers" to show up to the Angelus Prayer to show solidarity with the Pope. Thats why we were slightly confused when thousands of people were waving huge banners and signs all over... I thought maybe there was just alot of school pride. My friend Mary had her camera (I didn't bring mine because the Porta Portese is supposed to be filled with pick-pockets) and filmed a few seconds:

My birthday dinner in Trastevere.

Hello! For my birthday dinner the other night, four friends and I traveled to the neighborhood of Trastevere. One of our SLA's, Jim, gave us some advice about where to go in search of a good carpaccio. Carpaccio is my favorite dish at Francesca's back home, so I figured it would be easy to find around here. However, it is not. Jim told us about a good place for aperativo (appetizers and drinks, usually purchased by glass of wine with accompanying all-you-can-eat appetizers and fingerfood) in Trastevere. It took us a while to get to our destination. We took the 990 bus to Piazza Cavour and then got on the 280. When we were waiting for the 280 we met a very nice German girl named Anna. She is living in Rome and happens to be fluent in 5 or 6 languages, including English. She helped us by telling us what stop to exit from and how far to walk. Since we arrived about 2 hours after we had left the JFRC, we had missed the prime time for appetizers, and the aperativo had long passed. So we found a restaurant to eat at instead. Trastevere is a very active neighborhood, so it was very easy to pick and choose what restaurant to go to. Our dinner was wonderful for the most part. I wasn't pleased with my prosciutto bruschette, which I expected to come with tomato and various other seasonings in addition to the prosciutto. Unfortunately, I received a very hard piece of toast with a piece of prosciutto layed on top. At least our other food was delicious! We ordered a few pizzas which were very different from American pizza for about €5-7. There was much less cheese and much more flavor. The best thing that we ordered was carciofi all romana for €2. This was a huge artichoke with the top cut off sitting on the plate up-side-down (see picture to left). It was sumptuous. Completely heavenly. I cannot wait to order it again the next time I see it on the menu.

My birthday!

Well, today I turned 20 years old, which was fun, and kinda weird. More importantly, though, this marked the conclusion of my first week of classes!! This is very exciting. I am taking some very interesting classes: Italian I, Art in Rome, Baroque Art, Italian Film, and Human Rights: the View From Rome. My first week of classes was somewhat stressful. I am slowly getting accustomed to the whole "class" lifestyle again after winter break. Its weird to adjust to living here at the John Felice Rome Center more so than anything else, because it seems very protective and small. There are only about 200 people in the program and everything to do with the JFRC is in one building. We sleep, eat, study, and go to class in the same building... so it gets a little stifling. Lunch and dinner everyday is in the Mensa (cafeteria) and there is not much variety. We can get Pasta Pomodoro everyday or whatever the special selection is: usually something like Pomodoro with herbs, peppers, or oil. Not bad, but it gets old fast.

Today I went on a study trip to Ostia Antica and the Catacombs. Ostia Antica is the old port city to Rome at the mouth of the Tiber River. It is not as preserved as the ancient cities of Pompeii or Herculaneum, but there are still alot of intact buildings and structures. We ate lunch in the theater of Ostia, which was sweet! The acoustics were incredible. We spread out all around the ampitheater and I could hear everything that everyone was saying. The view was cool... over miles and miles of old ruins that looked like a low maze throughout the fields. Dr. Nicholson led the tour, which was good, because he knows an awful lot. He is my teacher for two of my on-site classes this semester. After we left Ostia Antica we went over to the Via Appia Antica, otherwise known as the Old Appian Way. Last semester in Communication Theory my professor Dr. Sproule had us read a book called "Murder on the Appian Way." This book was a very good way to prepare for studying the ancient civilizations of Rome, which I didn't appreciate until after the final. Anyway though, we went to the San Callisto catacombs outside the city of Rome. These catacombs are run by the Salesians (oh hey, Mary!) and contain the tombs of nine old popes. It was used as a cemetary between 200 A.D. and 500 A.D. It also used to contain the tomb of St. Cecilia before it was moved to the crypt in the Basillica of St. Cecilia.

After we returned to campus from the trip, we decided to heed the advice of some wise SLA's (Student Life Assistants... aka an international version of RA's who already graduated) and head down to Trasevere. Trasevere is a fun nightlife neighborhood south of the Vatican. We took the 990 bus to Piazza Cavour and caught the 280 and met a wonderful German girl who told us exactly where to get off and where to go. We walked around and found a good restaurant that had delicious carciofo all romana. It also had wonderful pizza. We walked back to the Piazza Cavour to catch the 990 back to campus in Monte Mario before the buses shut down at midnight. Buonasera!!

Assisi for orientation.

We just got back from Assisi. It was a beautiful, exhausting weekend. Assisi is about three hours away, so we took four buses loaded up. Only resident cars are allowed inside the city walls, so the buses parked and we walked up the hill in the pouring rain through the town to the retreat center. We had a solid lunch and then split into two groups: one to stay at the retreat center and do floor meetings and one to head out through town on a tour. I was in the rainy tour group :) so we walked to the Basilica of San Fransisco. We saw the crypt in the basement, the lower cathedral above it, and the upper cathedral which was built above that. It was all very ornate and fancy, which seemed a little contradictory to Francis' main beliefs, but -hey! Apparently, its not for Francis, its for God. I mean, obviously. There were some beautiful frescoes though. I really liked the art. After that we went and saw the old Roman temple/courthouse/something. That was cool, and we looked at it and spoke about it from under a beautiful painted alley (that had just been excavated three months ago).Then we went over to the Cathedral of San Chiara, or Saint Clare. This was wonderful! It was my favorite part of Assisi. The church is on the very edge of the city and rests right on a square with the most beautiful view of the Umbrian valley (I'm sure that its breathtaking when the weather is better)! Inside the nave, the walls are mostly white. Towards the choir there appear to be cracks in the walls, but they are really the remains of the old frescoes. The images around the altar are still fairly intact, and the crucifix above the altar is exquisite. Off the main church there is a chapel that houses the Crucifix of San Damiano, of which I have a replica at home! The chapel was locked all three times I attempted to see it this weekend, but it is the crucifix that allegedly spoke to St. Francis telling him to "rebuild my Church, which you can see is falling into ruin." The tour went in, did a little loop around the upstairs nave (skipping the chapel!!) and peaced out, but three of us (Annie, Deacon Tom, and I) hung back so we could look around more. Tom has lived in Rome for four years and he took us downstairs to see Saint Clare's tomb. Since she is one of the few incorruptibles, this was a very interesting part of the church. When we went downstairs there happened to be a Poor Clare singing a beautiful song somewhere near an air duct or something, because we could hear it nearly perfectly. We saw Clare, wearing a brown habit similar to Francis' and looked at the posters on the wall. They described all of the frescoes that used to be on the walls of the church before the last major earthquake a few hundred years ago that destroyed them. They depicted different stages of Clare's life, including when her sister Agnes (also a saint) ran away from home to join Clare. Her wealthy father sent people to collect her and carry her home, but a miracle occurred and Agnes became so heavy that no person could lift her! On the other side of the basement there was a display of Clare's and Francis' robes and a silver box containing Clare's hair (she was supposedly the most beautiful woman in Assisi. When she took her vows, she cut off her blonde curls as a symbol of her piety and kept them in this box).After the tour we went back to the retreat center for a delicious four-course dinner. After dinner we heard another speech or two and then had some free time, which for me was obvious- bed! So a good number of people went directly to bed, but unfortunately, the rain continued. This encouraged those in our number who felt inclined to party in this small, quiet town to go buy wine and drink it in their rooms, which sounded like they were all on my floor. Luckily I fell asleep before I had to yell at anyone, although others were not so lucky.We had heard that Assisi is best in the early morning, so about twenty of us woke up to walk around at about 6:00 a.m. This was definitely a good choice. We checked out different parts of the city, and stumbled upon the home that Francis grew up in, now called the Chiesa Nuova. It is kinda like a church but small and unusually shaped. We walked over to St. Clare's Cathedral and watched the "sun rise" (it was so cloudy that it just kinda got light, we couldn't see a sun rise) from the square out front. Another lucky thing about this was that this was the best weather we had all weekend, because it started raining again during breakfast. After breakfast we checked out and had some floor meeting time. Afterwards we went to walk around the other parts of the city that we hadn't explored yet, so although we missed seeing the castles, we saw the other major church in Assisi: the Cathedral of San Rufino. Saint Rufinus was the city's first bishop. He was martyred in 238. This church was very interesting. A good deal of the floor was glass, showcasing the layers of previous buildings upon that spot. This church also holds the baptismal font that Clare and Francis were baptized in. Another unusual thing about this church was the old cistern that was hidden off to the side. It was the city's emergency source of water when they were at war or under attack. We also visited a bookstore that is apparently the most famous one in Italy. It is operated by a man who hand designs, prints, and binds journals and stationary. Apparently it is discussed in "Under the Tuscan Sun." After another four-course meal, this time for lunch, we went down to the valley town outside of Assisi to check out the Basilica Maria degli Angeli. This is a huge church that contains inside the original chapel, the Porziuncola, that Francis chose as his favorite spot. This is the church that Francis restored after the crucifix of San Damiano spoke to him. When he was on his deathbed, he asked to be brought here to pray. After he prayed, he asked to be brought outside so that he could die in nature, right outside of the chapel. He died on a rock that is displayed inside the Basilica. This church was very pretty, but it was so huge that it wasn't really my style. The statues of cherubs inside were maybe ten to fifteen feet tall, and the ceiling is over 246 feet high! We ended our tour of Assisi here, and headed back home to Roma. Classes start tomorrow! Woo hoo!!

My first day in Roma!

Yesterday was an interesting day. After my nap I awoke to head downstairs for a meeting and then dinner. Dinner is called Mensa, and it is used instead of the term "cafeteria." As in, I'm going to Mensa. The food is decent, not good by any means, but excellent news: I will survive! Haha! It is extremely basic, and I hope that they haven't been pulling out all the stops on the food the first few days because if they have then I don't have much to look forward to in that department. Pasta with Pomodoro sauce or an herbed Pomodoro sauce. "Pomodoro" or "herbe" were the options today at lunch. They have nicely steamed but somewhat boring vegetables. Yesterday it was green beans and today it was broccoli. They also have chocolate pudding that moves as one jell-o-ey unit and yogurt that I have been sneaking away to have for breakfast. The yogurt is great, it comes in a few flavor options: banana, ananas, pesce, faggoli (banana, pineapple, peach, strawberry). At dinner one of the full-year students invited us out later that night with them. Anyways, they told us to come to the front door at 9:00pm and they would show us a fun place to go out via bus. So we showed up with approximately 40 other students. We got on a bus and took it to the end of the line then walked about 30 minutes (in the rain) until we got to Piazza Navona and then they said, "have fun, and the busses end at midnight (it was about 10:15), so be prepared to take a cab home, I hope you know the address!" And then they totally peaced out. So five of us SLU students, not trying to be cliquey but trying to avoid being those embarrassing wasted Americans decided to ditch the other 35 students and head off on our own. It was Brooke, Mary , Andrew , and Kyle. We walked around for a while and checked out the prices at a bunch of the bars but they were all about €6 per drink, 9 per cocktail. Eventually we found a Canadian bar with €4 pints. It was good, but it was only trafficked by Americans because the guy spoke English and thus it was not a truly Roman experience. It was fun, though. Anyway, this morning I woke up and showered and went to a few logistical meetings. I went to Mensa and headed out on an optional neighborhood walking tour. I'm not sure that I'll be able to replicate where I went but I now know where to find a laundromat, gelatoria, supermercado, lingerie store, and wine store. So thats good. I'm ready to start my classes and see if there are any awesome people hiding in my human rights class or something of the sort. I have to figure out my internet too, I've been trying to steal it in my room but its not going well. I skyped my parents briefly from the computer lab but it was awkward! I feel weird talking to people in a quiet room with like 20 other people in it. We leave tomorrow morning at 8:30am for Assisi, I hope it is fun.