Friday's History Walk

Here are some pictures from our history walk on Friday. We started at Santa Maria della Vittoria to see the Ecstasy of St. Teresa sculpture and we ended up at St. Peter's. It was beautiful!


The Ecstasy of St. Teresa sculpture


The church that houses the sculpture-- so beautiful!


Santa Maria della Quattro Fontaines: this might be my favorite church so far, it is so pretty!


First glimpse of St. Peter's... wow.


We got these fun little headsets so that we could hear our teacher talk and she didn't have to yell!


To give you scale: The canopy is the equivalent of 10 stories and the entire thing can fit into the little lantern that you can see way up on top! That dome is HUGE!


Michaelangelo's "Pieta" his best sculpture that he made when he was 22! It made me feel pretty untalented... :)


"The St. Peter's Effect": In order to keep people from getting reverse vertigo, the sculptures at the top of this wall are 1/3 smaller than the ones at the base. The ones at the top are 10 stories away, but you would never guess it!

Last weekend, we attempted to go to Tivoli, but we missed the train because we were at the wrong station! Luckily, the tickets are good until April, so we were able to save them for another time. Instead, we ended up walking around Rome, and I got to see the Spanish Steps finally! Rome also had Carnevale going on, which is when there are a bunch of shows on the streets and little kids dress up (like on Halloween) and throw confetti everywhere. It was really fun to see! We also stopped at the BEST gelato place ever. For only 2.20 euros, you get three big scoops of gelato and you get to pick from probably 50 different flavors! It was amazing.


cute little girl with confetti at Carnevale


The Spanish Steps!


Some street performers at Carnevale


Then, on Sunday (Valentines Day) I went back to the gelato place for a Valentines day treat :) I picked only pink and white flavors to make sure that it was festive and it was delicious (the white chocolate flavor was by far my favorite)! Then in the afternoon Meagan and I made some baked ziti to bring to our professor’s apartment that night to celebrate the Chinese New Year. A bunch of my classmates have a hidden cooking talent and we had amazing food like hand tossed pizza, tiramisu, mulled wine, egg rolls, cake, and much much more. Afterwards, our teacher taught us how to salsa dance and tango. It was a very fun night.


My Valentine's Day gelato!

*Side note: I just realized that most of what I write in my blog is about food. But don’t worry. All of this food I’m eating is mixed in with thousands of miles of walking, so I’m not getting huge… yet.

This week, we worked on a drawing to show the element of earth on our site. We had to re-design our palazzo to be a pedestrian space instead of a parking area. It was pretty fun, but definitely a lot of work… and my teacher didn’t even look at my drawing the day it was due! So frustrating. We also had a history walk on Friday and we went around and learned about all of the wealthy families and their homes. We stopped at the Capitoline museum where we saw a lot of famous / cool statues. There was also a church next to the Capitoline that had a ton of chandeliers inside. It was beautiful!


Famous statue


Famous statue


The church with all of the chandeliers

Today (Sunday) we were finally able to make it to Tivoli. We took the train there and stopped at Hadrian’s Villa first. It was an enormous complex and I don’t think we even saw half of it. Most of it was in ruins, but if you used your imagination you could see how amazing this place must have been in its time. There was a huge pool of water that was once an enclosed bath complex and there were domes and walls everywhere that were leftover from this huge villa.


Hadrian's Villa.


Famous/beautiful pool that used to be a bath

We also stopped at Villa D’Este, which was another enormous villa. This one was in much better shape and you could actually walk through the intricately painted walls of the villa and out into a beautiful courtyard with a bunch of fountains. It was so pretty and really fun to take pictures there.


Fountains at Villa D'Este


Villa D'Este


Villa D'Este

Snow in Rome!!!

So… there isn’t much new to report from this week. Wednesday we went on a walking tour of Rome in the pouring rain and freezing cold. It was pretty miserable. And we had a drawing due on Thursday, so I spent Wednesday afternoon and night at studio working on it. Then on Thursday we finished/presented our drawings and then we had drawing class.

Then today I had my Roman history walking tour and it SNOWED! It hasn’t snowed in Rome since 1996… so this was a pretty big deal. My history teacher even ended the walk early so that we could all go see our favorite Roman monument in the snow. We all headed over to the Pantheon to see the snow come through the oculus, but by the time we got there the snow had stopped. I got some pretty cool pictures on the way there, though! We also went to a church where we saw the skull of St. Valentine, so fitting for this weekend!





Snow on oranges?!


Snow + palm trees!


Our courtyard post-snowstorm


Snow on the streets of Rome


St. Valentine's skull!

Valencia!

This weekend we had Monday off, so we had three days to travel! I went with some friends to Valencia, which was amazing. We got up Saturday morning and took a taxi to the airport (which was TINY because it is the budget travel airport!) They didn't have very many chairs, so we just sat on the ground for a while and then about 30 minutes before we were supposed to board people started getting in line because seats on the plane are first-come first-served. So when it was time to board they let a certain number of people through at a time and then each group was shuttled over to a plane! Once the shuttle stopped people literally ran to get on the plane. It was kind of ridiculous. I was in the second shuttle, so I was able to sit by some friends :)

We arrived to some beautiful weather in Valencia (65 degrees and sunny!) which was a big change to the rain in Rome. We took a metro to our hostel and checked in. After that, we decided to walk to the shore and see the sea-- we thought it would be close, but we ended up walking for forever and by the time we got there it was dark :( We forgot that it is winter for people in Valencia, so no restaurants were open by the beach, so we ended up taking the bus back towards our hostel and we found a cute outdoor restaurant and I tried some paella and sangria (both known for in Valencia). It was pretty good but way overpriced for what it was... I ordered the paella with sausage, and there were only a few mini pieces of hot dog in it, a little disappointing! After eating we walked around some more, found some delicious dessert and went to bed.

On Sunday we woke up and had breakfast at Starbucks (we wanted a BIG coffee, no more of those puny ones! haha) and then walked towards the Kalatrava buildings which were amazing! We stopped at the most beautiful urban park I have ever seen on our way there. We ended up renting those 4 person bikes for a half hour and it was so much fun. Then we went and took a billion million pictures of the Kalatrava buildings. It was amazing to see what that guy could think of! Then we had lunch at the mall! Spain is so much more modern than Rome... they had malls and international food and smooth roads and everything! We had some sort of middle-eastern food that was really good—definitely a good break from pizza and pasta! After eating we went to the aquarium for the day. It was pretty fun. They had a dolphin show and a bunch of exhibits to walk through. There was also a lot of stuff to do outside, which felt so good since the weather was so nice. Afterwards we went back to the hostel to get ready and then we went out to a place called Wok to Walk for dinner where we got some delicious stir fry. We stopped at a store afterwards and bought some wine before heading an Irish pub to watch the Superbowl! The game didn’t start until 12:30am (because of the time difference) and we didn't realize that the pub closed at 2 (most pubs stay open until like 5), so they kicked us out at the beginning of the halftime show (the only thing that I actually wanted to see!) By that time all other pubs showing the super bowl had huge covers so we just went home and went to bed.

Biking around the park!


Kalatrava building


Kalatrava building


Part of the aquarium (also designed by Kalatrava)


The inside of the aquarium


So pretty!


The dolphin show

On Monday morning we got up and went shopping at a market and a couple of cute stores and then we checked out of our hostel and got some lunch before heading to the airport. I got home and unpacked/uploaded pictures/ did some laundry/ got ready for classes after our 5 day break!

Today we had studio from 9-5 and we worked on drawing a section through the neighborhood that our studio is in. I thought it was going to be a long day after getting back from vacation, but it was actually pretty fun. Then we had a history lecture until 6:30 and headed home for the night.

A little bit of Rome and a field trip to Umbria

I have a week’s worth of updating for you… get comfortable because it’s been a busy week :)

On Saturday, it was raining the whole day, so my roommates and I stayed at the apartment had a low-key day sitting around the apartment working on drawings that were due for Monday. Then at night we went out to a Chinese restaurant and out for gelato afterwards.

Sunday was also really low key. We got up SUPER early (6:30 am! Go me!) to go shopping at the Sunday market again! We planned to go out for cappuchinos beforehand, but we were up before the café opened! The market was full of great deals, of course, but really cold. When our hands started to go numb, we looked for a place to go inside and warm up. The first place that we saw looked pretty familiar—a McDonalds! We stopped inside and were extremely impressed. The inside was decorated beautifully and there were long tables with outlets for laptops and little reading lamps (I might even go back there to study one day!) I also got something off the euro menu—a McToast. It is a grilled ham and cheese sandwich… delicious… the McDonalds in the US need to take a lesson from Europe! (side note: do not worry, I’m not going to start going to McDonalds regularly, I just thought I would share my amazement at the quality of the place, haha)


The inside of McDonalds

Monday was the easiest day of school so far. We had our drawing exhibition to show off our three weeks of the intensive drawing course. We hung up a sample of our sketches and then we were free to walk around and look at everyone else’s work. It was fun to compare the work of other people. At the end, we were supposed to meet one-on-one with our professor, but my meeting was moved to this week, so I was free to go home!

Tuesday morning we had our Italian final and we started studio in the afternoon. We took a tour around our studio’s neighborhood (the Jewish Ghetto) since this will be the site that we are going to work with for the next few weeks. It was a pretty interesting tour but extremely cold!

Wednesday morning we had our modern architecture class, and I wasn’t very impressed this time. They took us around to weird places in Rome and they walked us for 3.5 hours straight with no breaks. I think I was kind of bitter about it because I have been fighting a cold all week and walking around in the cold all day wasn’t making it any better! The afternoon was better though. We got our first studio assignment, to draw a section through our studio’s neighborhood, adding the sewer and water systems below ground. Instead of being exactly precise, we are just measuring things out with our body parts (alleyways are about 4 steps wide, stairs are about one hand tall). So we just walked around the neighborhood measuring everything! It should be a fun project.


A beautiful graveyard that we visited on the tour

THEN came Thursday, Day one of our field trip to Umbria, which was amazing! We started the morning with a brisk half hour walk to the bus station. We boarded a double-decker bus and settled in for a nap on the way to Bagnaia. When we arrived, the sun was shining and the weather was perfect. We climbed a hill and went into Villa Lanta, an enormous garden complex with amazing views, beautiful fountains, and gorgeous plants. I loved it!


A pretty fountain in Villa Lanta


Another pretty fountain in Villa Lanta


The gardens in Villa Lanta


A water feature in Villa Lanta


Then, we headed to Caprarola where we visited Palazzo Farnese. It was a huge fortress with beautiful paintings on every single inch of all ceilings and walls. It was pretty, but difficult to picture. They never really told us what the rooms were used for and there was no furniture in the rooms to help us figure it out. So, every room kind of ended up looking the same. Nevertheless, it was pretty and the views from the entrance were amazing!


The view from Caprarola


The Palazzo Farnese

On our way to the next destination, we stopped at a small little store for some food tasting. The ladies at the store had tables of food waiting for us when we arrived. We tried bread dipped in Olive oil, bread with artichokes, and bread with hazelnut spread, all of which was made in that region. We also tasted hazelnuts, wine and naturally sparkling water, also made there.

Then, we headed to Perugia. We checked into our hotel and walked around the town for a while before heading to dinner with the entire architecture class, teachers and all! They sat us down at 4 long tables and just kept bringing us food! It was definitely the biggest meal that I’ve ever had. We were there for 3 hours and I was eating steadily the entire time. None of us knew how much food there was going to be so we didn’t pace ourselves very well and we ended up eating three times as much as we anticipated. We started out with bread, cheese, and salami. Then they brought bread with hummus and rice. Then pitas and little pizza roll things. After that came a bowl of soup. That was just the starters. Then came a plate of spaghetti. And after that came baked potatoes and salad. And then sausage and pork chops! I think that all of that was considered the main dish. Chocolate pie came for dessert after all of that. There was also a steady stream of wine and sparkling water. I could barely fit it all. After dinner we went to our hotel room with intentions of leaving shortly after, but we all fell asleep from our full stomachs!


Our Hotel


The restaurant that we ate at


We woke up early the next morning (Friday) and went to breakfast in the hotel lobby (more food…) There was a ton of food, and you know how much I love continental breakfast, so of course I had to eat a lot even though I was still full from the night before! I have never been fuller in my life. Then we went out into Perugia for some sightseeing and sketching. We did our sketching assignment for the first half of the day and then went around to some cute little shops and we found another market! We also found some beautiful lookout areas (Perugia is a town up on a hill) with views of the mountains and of the town of Assissi. It was absolutely beautiful and definitely my favorite town in Italy so far (besides Rome, of course!) I would love to go back on a non-rainy day.


View from Perugia


View from Perugia



Meagan and me with the view in the background


We got back on the bus around 3:30 and arrived in Rome around 7. Now I am unpacking, uploading pictures, and packing for my trip to Valencia tomorrow afternoon! I get home Monday night and I will update you as soon as I can. I miss you all!