Last 3 weeks of my trip!!!

Okay, so this is long overdue, but we were so busy and internet opportunities so scarce that I just couldn't keep updated. Then I came home and have been busy and had such a slow internet connection (until now)that i just haven't been able to finish this. So I will now attempt to explain the entire end of my trip in an extremely long blog post that I hope you will all find the time to read somewhere in your busy schedules...

Finishing Florence
Our last week in Florence consisted of doing artwork like mad - trying to get it
all done in time to turn in, in trying to see all the many sites we had missed up to that point and, of course, in going to all our favorite Kebab places and gelato stands one more time. We went to the Academia again to see all the things we had missed (i.e., almost everything except the David) and I got to go through the Instrument Gallery and saw some of the most awesome old instruments like Spinets, Hurdy-Gurdy's and S-horns along with really old violins, violas, clarinets and piano-fortes. It was sweet.
That week we also went to the Medici chapel which is a really beautiful chapel filled with some of Michelangelo's most famous statues. We went to the San Lorenzo church (or rather we went into it after walking past it every day). We went inside the Duomo(also after walking past it every day) and went up in the dome and out onto the very top of the cathedral looking out over all of Florence.
This was one of my vary favorite experiences. First off, the staircase we walked up was super sweet. It was exactly the kind of stone, spiral staircase that you would want to be in the secret passageway of a scary mystery story (or just in your own super-cool house). I definitely developed an obsession with staircases in Italy. I never knew I liked them so much, but I do...
It was also a really neat experience because you got to get right up next to the dome paintings - which are painted to look normal-sized and shaped from the floor nearly 300 feet below. So they are really awesome to behold when you are right next to them instead. Then of course there is the view from the top, with the city spread out like a map below. The Florence Cathedral is pretty much amazing. Second only to St. Peter's I think.
On Wednesday night, Morgan and I were out taking pictures for our photo class and we decided on a whim to go up to the Piazza Michelangelo to watch the sunset over all of Florence. It turned out that there was a Muse concert going on up there, so we got free music and a FABULOUS sunset. It was one of the best nights of my whole life.

We just wandered around and took pictures and enjoyed ourselves immensely for an hour or so and then we began heading home. A little ways down the hill, we ran into a couple of high-school age Brazilian boys who began flirting with Morgan and I, but mostly Morgan because she has the most amazing white-blond, curly hair that they seemed to find fascinating.



One of the boys wouldn't stop telling her that he loved her and touching her hair. I found this all vastly amusing, but I'm pretty sure she did not find it nearly so amusing. It was really hard to get them to leave because they didn't speak English very well, but we finally managed it(they tried to get us to come to the concert with them and when we refused, they said they would walk us home). After they left we had a beautiful and leisurely walk home in the dusky twilight by the Arno - a great end to a great night.
Friday night we did a talent show in which, Brian, the sculpture teacher and his wife Rita cross-dressed and lip-synced to a high school musical song. It was hilarious. Then we all made varying degrees of fools of ourselves for the rest of the evening ending with an encore by Brian who sang love boat still wearing his woman-outfit. Pretty much it was hilarious.
Sunday was our last day in Florence and it was... eventful. We went first to Santa Croce in the morning and saw the interior of the church (more Michelangelo sculptures and just a beautiful church with quite the amazing facade) during morning mass. Then we raced to the train station and out to church for Sacrament meeting. After sacrament meeting it was off to the Uffizi for a last thorough look through the museum and then to the Pitti Palace to explore the palace museum and the Boboli gardens once more. In the palace museum there were some really interesting rooms still decorated like they were originally - from the curtains and furniture to the carpets and walls covered in fabric. It was awesome. Then we got to see an exhibit of Greek sculpture including lots of originals from Pompeii. It was very busy, but a wonderful day all in all.
Okay... I think I've left out a few things about Florence... Our last 3 Sundays in Florence we all had big dinner/dessert pot lucks where the whole group went to one apartment or another and we all got to make interesting and exciting food to share... which, of course, was much more interesting considering that all the measuring utensils are not in cups and teaspoons, but in milliliters... It was tons of fun though and gave us a chance to talk to some of the girls we didn't see as often
because our apartments were so far apart.
Also, for the last two Sunday evenings, we got to sing with the missionaries in the Piazza Signoria outside the Uffizi. We sang hymns in Italian and, as people would stop to listen, the missionaries would go out to them and talk. It was a really great experience!

PISA
So the night before we left Florence, we stayed up nearly all night cleaning and packing. We were figuring on a long bus ride the next day, but we really only had about 4 hours on the bus total.

arco and the Porzibus were there pretty early in the morning to pick us up. Those of us living in the apartments in the part of town fondly known as "Fendi-land" had about a mile stroll with our suitcases and all our luggage - not fun rolling heavy suitcases across cobblestone, I'm telling ya right
now... But we did in fact make it to the bus and had about an hour to sleep on the bus until we got to Pisa. We got out at Pisa and had a short shuttle ride to the "Field of Miracles". We got to go into the baptistery - which has the most amazing acoustics, the cathedral, the cemetery (more like a mausoleum though, it's just corridors around a central garden/lawn full of stone tombs and the floors are lined in marble headstones instead of tiles. Some of the most recent tombs were practically new too, which surprised me. And of course, there was the tower itself. It really was
cool and I was so sad that we didn't have reservations to go to the top! But Pisa was really fun and I was almost sad we couldn't stay longer. One of my favorite parts was the mugs they sell... they're all tilted like the tower. As a ceramics student, it was pretty much the equivalent of a pun that's so bad it's hilarious.
After spending a few hours in Pisa, we got back on the bus and continued toward the coast.

Biasa and Cinque Terra
We drove up into the misty, rainy, tree-covered hills on the coast to a little town called Biasa. The roads are so winding and narrow that we were all sure we were going to die at one point or another, but we finally made it there and had quite the trek up a steep, windy road to get to the hostel. Biasa was one of my very favorite places in Italy. The town truly was tiny. There was a tabacchi store (tobacco stores are kind of the equivalent of a corner drug store or something...)a teeny little grocery stand where we bought cheese and rolls for lunch in Cinque Terra, a pizzeria and a restaurant. The people were all really friendly too. The town was beautiful and we just went rambling through it for hours looking at the brightly painted houses and hidden stairways and tiny old doors. In one winding road we met up with like, 6 almost identical cats. Near the edge of the town on a path up into the woods we got chased by dogs and when we were sitting on a bench looking out over a coastal town hundreds of feet below us, an old man came and gave us a small branch from his cherry tree with a whole cluster of cherries on it. They were some of the best cherries I have ever eaten!
We stayed in Biasa at night, but we spent all our days in Cinque Terra. Literally translated it means 5 towns or 5 bits of earth. The Cinque Terra is slowly becoming a more touristy place as it is becoming more accessible (until recently, it was only accessible by boat or mule). It is 5 towns along the shore, they are connected by train as well as by the "Via del Amor" or trail of love. Haha. Which actually becomes a rather brutal hiking trail the farther you go. The hike between towns 3,4 and 5 are nothing like a lovers lane. I figure the name for this trail comes from a spot inside one of the tunnels where there is a statue of a woman and a man kissing and they and the railing behind them are all covered in padlocks, each carrying 2 names and a date on them.
The weather was somewhat dark and rainy whilst we were there with some sunshine now
and again, which I loved. I felt most at home in Biasa and the Cinque Terra I think. On our first day we explored the first town and walked to the second town. In the second town, right off the path there is a little tiny "mermaid lagoon" where we swam away the afternoon. We didn't even get passed the second town on the first day, but we enjoyed ourselves thoroughly, taking our time, swimming, scrutinizing the murals and graffiti on the walls, eating some really good pizza and laying on beach #5 for the little bit of real sunshine near the end of the day.

The second day we started out with a good long hike from town 1 to town 4, then we went back to beach number 5 by train (the going was treacherous by trail 4 to 5 even in the best of conditions, and it had been raining steadily all morning) and had a little rest on the sand. From there we took the train back to the second town and went swimming in the lagoon again. Right above the lagoon is a nice outdoor restaurant where we ate and watched the sun go down. I had my first taste of swordfish (which is really good by the way) and had my favorite Italian dinner which looked like worms but was really black linguine with shrimp and pine nuts and the most amazing, creamy sauce. It was delicious, even if it didn't look delicious. When we finished dinner it was dark, so we headed for the train to take us back to town #1, but the trains were temporarily stopped, supposedly because of a landslide way down the line somewhere. So the four of us, (me, Morgan, Annie and Nicole I do believe) headed for the trail. It was a short walk between 1 and 2, but we did prefer not to make it in the dark... Anyway, luckily enough we ended up walking back with an older gentleman who was from California if I remember correctly. He was very kind and a devout catholic. We talked with him about the cathedrals we had seen and how they were such amazing tributes to the Lord. In the end, he finally asked us what our religion was and when he found out we were Mormon, he was a little bit defensive, but was impressed at how much we knew about our own religion and that at least 3 of us would be going on missions soon. We met up with his family in the first town and were introduced to his wife, daughter and son. Most of them left us pretty quickly after that since it was raining buckets, but the son, Steven, walked us back to our bus. He is apparently a religion major who has been studying for 2 years in Austria. He was a really awesome guy and it was quite interesting to talk to him about religion since he was so well informed. He was also a gentleman, cute and around our age, so that didn't hurt either. Especially after spending so much time with only girls.

Turin
The next morning we loaded up the bus and headed for Turino or Turin (2006 winter Olympics!) Turin is very beautiful... for a city anyway. We went straight to the Egyptian museum when we arrived that evening, and it was amazing! As I understand it, it is the 2nd most comprehensive Egyptian museum in the world, right after Cairo (not that I'm jealous or anything, Ames). It was really fabulous. They had mummies and sarcophagi and most exciting for me was the huge granite (well most of them were actually diorite I think, and a few were basalt, but I digress) statues of gods, goddesses, pharaohs and other royal and supernatural persons. They were so amazing! There were also small beads and carved figurines, collections of mummified animals representing gods (they would keep crocodiles or cats or monkeys in the respective temples or places of worship for the god represented by that form, and when the animal died it would be mummified and buried in or near the temple with a funeral to rival a pharaohs - I found that fascinating) and large portions of burial chambers (like the mummy, all 4 sarcophagi it was laying in, a mummy of one of the servants, a collection of beds, a wig, preserved food for the mummified man, etc.etc.)Nothing quite so complete as the King Tut exhibit, but very educational all the same. We spent more time at the Museo Egizio the next day as well and also went into the painting gallery upstairs known as the Galleria Sabauda. This gallery contains all the art work from the royal Palace in Turin.It included artists like Jan Van Eyck, Rembrandt, Bronzino, Titian, Tintoretto, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Mantegna, Hans Memling, Botticelli and a rather extensive collection of Peter Paul Ruben's work (who I have a great respect for after seeing his paintings in person). A quite extraordinary collection to say the least.
That afternoon some of us went up to see the Alps. It was fantastic. I loved it. We ran through fields of wildflowers and we saw deer in the mountains. We followed a little stream/waterfall up the side of a steep hill and into the woods. There was a man herding cows on the road with all the cow bells jangling. It was incredibly picturesque. I loved it so much! Even though we spent very little time there.

Milan
The next morning, we loaded up the bus and made our way to Milan. When we arrived there was only a little bit of daylight left, so we all stopped at the Brera museum which had some phenomenal paintings including quite a lot of works by Mantegna, Caravaggio, Titian and the like. Masterpieces. This one included in particular Mantegna's really famous Cristo Morto or Lamentation over the dead Christ which was revolutionary in its use of perspective - you civ people will understand me at least. It too is much better in person.
That night we went to dinner at an Italian Chinese restaurant. It was run by a great Chinese family and was such a nice place and the food was sooo good. It was pretty much amazing and then we went and got some really good gelato and ate it in a park near our hotel. Then we went back to our hotel and decided some of us would meet up downstairs and hang out and play cards for a while until it was bed time.The hotel we stayed in that night was pretty small, and you have to go through the bar/breakfast room and outside to get to the rooms downstairs. Well I was ready sooner than the others so I headed down alone. When I got to the bar, there was Marco the bus driver and the hotel owner having a drink together. I was trying to continue through inconspicuously (pretty much impossible in such a tiny room) but Marco noticed me and offered to buy me a drink. This was so awkward and unexpected that I didn't even tell him I don't drink I just mumbled something that probably was "no thank you" and left. It was definitely the first time any man had offered to buy me a drink...
We played some card games and talked for quite some time before turning in that night. Breakfast the next day was really amazing, especially the hot chocolate. It was so creamy and fabulous I can hardly believe it. After breakfast Marco dropped us off in downtown Milan (so to speak) and Morgan, Annie, Nicole and I spent several hours exploring the Cathedral.
The Cathedral in Milan is one of the very few Gothic Cathedrals in Italy. The inside, while beautiful and extraordinary like all cathedrals, did not contain the most amazing artwork or best craftsmanship we had ever seen in a cathedral, but the outside of the cathedral is decorated with the most mind-boggling sculptures and marble patterns. I can hardly begin to describe my awe. Every statue whether man, woman or beast was different from every other statue. Each a masterpiece on it's own.
Every symbol atop the lacy marble structure was different from the one beside it. Every spire and ornament was topped with an individual marble decoration that reminded you of anything from ivy to frosting. We wandered the top of the cathedral for hours staring in open-mouthed awe.

When we finally descended to the piazza below, we were accosted by men who began tying "free" bracelets onto our wrists and then asking us for a "tip". They were obnoxious and they had no problem blocking your way and getting right in your face.
I finally paid one of them so he would get out of my way, but that was a mistake because then the rest of them started asking me to pay for everyone else's. I rarely get really angry, but they managed it. I was so furious I was almost sorry they never came near us again. Just off the Piazza was the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele I think is what it's called which is an old renaissance structure (although it has certainly been renovated many times since the Renaissance)turned shopping mall. Right in the center in black and gold buildings there is a shop on every corner: Louis Vuton, Prada, Savini and... Mcdonald's. Supposedly sit-down restaurant style, I didn't go in, but it amused me so much...
So after we spent forever at the cathedral and surrounding areas, we headed down the street to the Castello Sforzesco.
It's an awesome old castle filled with artwork, furniture, armories and so on. It was a really amazing place to visit. It even had free, somewhat clean, public bathrooms! And in Italy, that is something you are always glad to find. We spent a lot of time inside the first day and the second day we spent a lot of time out on the grounds (which includes extensive gardens and a Roman Triumphal Arch. On the second day we also went shopping. Yes even I couldn't go through the fashion capitol of the world without hitting a few not-too-expensive stores. Truly this was only because I had to stay with my group, but that's okay. And what did I come away with? A pair of earings. Go figure. They are some of my favorite earings though.
We also visited the La Scala theatre (which is beautiful) and we even got to watch a bit of the rehearsal that was going on from behind glass panels. The theatre also had a museum complete with original instruments, music, props and costumes used in some of the first productions there. It was so interesting! We ate lunch in a park just outside, and I had my first experience with pigeon-holding. Most people think they're disgusting and they probably are, but I think they're really cute and I like holding them.
Oh another thing in Milan that I loved was the cows. Not real cows, but sculpture cows. If any of you have been to the Pike Place market and surrounding area in Seattle you probably have seen the pigs. In Milan they have the same thing except they are cows. They were great!
We even saw a modern art exhibit while in Milan (Kandinsky at the Palazzo Reale if I remember correctly) which was refreshing since by this point we were all certainly on Classical Masterpiece overload.

Venice
From Milan we headed to Venice for 2 and 1/2 days and all I can say is that I love Venice. Our hostel was not ideal. I suppose it wasn't extremely awful, but the food was a rip off and the rooms were very... public. There was like 16 people to a room and the doors didn't lock (we did have lockers next to our bunks though) and the spacers that made up the rooms didn't reach the ceiling, so all the rooms were connected and you could hear everyone on your floor like they were in the same room. And to top it off there was a hoard of German high schoolers there that were drunk all the time. According to Jeff (the watercolor teacher) the boys all complained that there weren't any hot girls in the hostel, or rather, there were but they were all "Mormon or something". We all got a good laugh out of that.
We began our visit to Venice with a trip to the Bienale. It is, as I understand it, the biannual art show. It is in Venice every 2 years, and it features all of the very best contemporary artists throughout the world. I absolutely loved it. For anyone interested (besides myself) I will put up more pictures later.
We really spent our first day mostly at the Bianale. Instead of buses, they have ferries and gondolas (but gondolas are way out of my price range, except for the public ones that we never even saw since we were gallivanting through back alleys most of the time.) We took the ferry to the Bianale in the morning and stayed there for hours and hours. Then we just wandered around and tried to find dinner and dropped Katie's brother off (who was visiting her for the last week or two of the trip) at the Piazza Roma (which is all the way across the main island from the Bianale and we took the back roads and tried to get there without using the ferries. We did get there eventually, but it took a lot of navigating and running through crazy criss-crossing streets and alleyways. Pretty much it was totally awesome. We got to see more of the city that way, than we ever would have otherwise. It is so beautiful!
The next day, we got up and went to the John Singer Sergeant exhibit (you can see the sign for the exhibit in this picture, along with Peter, the painting teacher and his kids). It mostly consisted of his water colors of Venetian canals and buildings. It was great! Then we saw the inside of the San Marco Cathedral which is just covered with gold mosaics from the floor to the top of the domes. It's so beautiful, if a little gaudy. We held pigeons in San Marco square (you can hardly help it). Then we sat and ate lunch in a tiny piazza somewhere in the back alleys behind San Marco (since store and restaurant owners will come shoo you away if you try to eat in San Marco square), I think it was called the Piazza Campo. Then we simply wandered. We looked into shops and loitered on bridges over the Grand Canal and admired the Venetian glass. In the end we decided to visit the island of Murano and see the glass blowing, but we got there too late.
There were no workshops open and only one shop. The glass is truly amazing though. From glass chandeliers to tiny figurines and delicate little animals it comes in every color and shape and size and only in the finest workmanship (although I will admit that the chandeliers were a bit much for me in all there enormity and elaborateness). We took a ferry back to the piazza Roma to drop off Katie's brother for the night and then we rode a ferry back to our hostel by sunset. It was pretty much the perfect day in Venice.

Ravenna
The next morning, we left early for Santo Stephano, but we stopped mid-way to see the San Vitale Basilica in Ravenna.
Again any Civ people or Art History buffs will know that this is one of the best preserved byzantine monuments and that this is also where some of the most famous byzantine mosaics are to be found. The most famous are the depictions of Emperor Justinian and his wife.
We discovered though, that the mausoleum has a great collection of beautiful mosaics as well. I was lucky enough to get a few pictures of it. They keep it really dark, and you're not aloud to use the flash, so it was certainly a tricky business.

Santo Stefano
After Ravenna we drove quite a bit farther into the wilder country near Rome to a little town called Santo Stefano.It is a place that almost no one has ever heard of and in fact I can't even find a reference to it on the internet - which is something amazing indeed in this day and age. It is a little tiny town on top of a tall hill (or small mountain, whichever you prefer), and it is a castle. Well, without the out-lying wall. But there is a great tower and little winding alleys that connect many similar buildings all together. The rooms were all restored with furnishings from the time period right down to the bed sheets and the few scattered books (with the improvement of electricity and indoor plumbing). It was amazing. We certainly all spent a great night being princesses. We ate a huge Italian feast in a little inn where we had about 5 courses served to us in rough clay bowls at long wooden tables.
The room where Sarah and I slept was professed to be the town lord's room back in the day. There were two large beds and our own luxuriously bathroom and a sitting room immediately attached to it. There was also a little balcony or almost an open-air gallery just outside this sitting room, and to complete the set-up, all the doors locked with big old-fashioned keys. In the morning, we climbed the tower and then went for a stroll around the town. I still wonder about the towns history... most of the buildings that are not used for small shops or sleeping chambers are boarded up and full of rubble. It is so beautiful though, I will always wish to go back, and someday, I hope I'll get to. After our town stroll, we proceeded to walk (which turned out to be more of a hike, really) out into the surrounding hills and I've never seen such fields of wild-flowers and beautiful valleys of cultivation that still seemed to be but an extension of the wild country around it.
On our way back from this glorious walk, we ran into Peter's (the painting teacher's) kids - Sam, Jacob and Eve playing by the big pond. We had some good times. We launched grass "rockets" and jumped off of this mound that was like, 6 feet high (and I was definitely in a skirt, that was tricky) and we also caught frogs (stood still while they jumped into our hands was more like it, there were millions of them in the marshy grass around the pond). I think this was about the time that Sam and Jacob decided that I wasn't so bad for a girl... after all, I liked frogs and snakes and wasn't even afraid of getting my feet wet and slimy. It was great! (They even invited me to come with them to Germany after the study abroad was over, something I couldn't do of course, but a nice gesture non-the-less). To complete our visit, we returned to the town and bought gelato and post cards.















































































Rome

Then we got on the bus in the early afternoon to take us back to Rome. When we arrived at our hotel and were going through quite a long check-in process, we also had quite the process of saying good-bye to Marco the bus driver and our Porzibus. The whole group felt sincerely attached to Marco and we made him cry with our good-bye card and pictures. Then we all went out for a late dinner and came back and went to bed so we could start early the next morning, and we certainly had a day of it!
My two days in Rome at the end of the trip were the complete opposite of my first day in Rome. I found that despite what I thought when I was lost and alone, the Roman subway system is about the most straightforward in all of Italy. Also, if you have a good map and know where you're going, it's even easy to navigate the streets. I found our way to difficult spots more than once with a good map. (and believe-it-or-not, the Pantheon was one of the most difficult to find.)
We began at the Colosseum, which, by all accounts is huge and marvelous, but so not worth the wait, the tourist harassment (for only 11 euros more you can skip the line and get a guided tour, English, Spanish or French! For just a few euros you can take a picture with the gladiators! etc.) and the 11 euros you have to pay to get in. Besides, they fence off the most interesting parts... like the arena. Palantine Hill (also known as Capitoline Hill) is well worth strolling through... being the large area full of Roman ruins right outside the Colosseum. The most fantastic is of course, the Arch of Titus.
It's a Roman triumphal arch with the depiction of the carrying off of the Arc of the Covenant. Very famous and quite amazing when you're standing nearly directly below it (they don't allow you actually underneath it, but you can go right up to the base).
Next we went to the Museo Capitale which is where all these Roman artifacts are kept from Palantine hill. There was, among other things, the surviving pieces of the Colossal statue of Constantine as well as the original bronze casting of the Equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, and one of the original bronze castings of the She-wolf nursing Romulus and Remus from Roman mythology. It was quite a museum.
From Capitoline Hill, we made our way to the Trevi fountain which is a very famous Roman landmark (and supposedly, if you throw a coin into it and make a wish, you will return to Rome again in your lifetime). The fountain itself is huge and made up of many fantastic sculptures depicting Neptune, the Roman god of the sea and his kingdom.
From the fountain we made our way to the Villa Borghese, which is a sculpture museum most famous for containing a relatively large number of Bernini's Sculptures. And for how little you hear about him, I would venture to say that he is as great as Michelangelo in his abilities and much more subtle in his style. His sculptures are beautiful and they seem to live, breath and move as you look at them. Hard stone truly became soft flesh and supple cloth through his skill.

From the Villa Borghese we made our way to the Pantheon. It took quite some time to find a road in the right direction, and then we thought for sure we were completely lost. We were traveling through cramped back alleys and tiny piazza's. One such piazza- to my great joy - contained the Column of Trajan. Amazingly tucked away in an unimportant corner of Rome. About this time, we ran into a few other American girls, our age, trying to locate the illusive Pantheon. Then, just about two tiny alleys later, lo and behold, the Pantheon was right in front of us. Only in Italy can you hide a building the size of the Pantheon. The actual building is impossible to describe to anyone else. The sheer enormity of the dome is fantastic, but no matter how large it is, it manages to be perpetually full of people. To complete the night, we had some delicious gelato just down the street from the Pantheon and one of my fondest memories will always be, that Morgan bought gelato for a gypsy woman. This gypsy came into the shop begging. I put a small coin in her cup when it became obvious we would get no peace, but Morgan feigned ignorance. "You want gelato?" she asked, putting on her best confused face. The woman said "no", and something about money for her "bambini" and shook her cup in Morgan's face. Resigned, Morgan obligingly placed a small coin in the cup and was quickly thanked by the gypsy who then nudged her and said "gelato?" in a coaxing voice. Haha! So Morgan let her pick out a flavor of gelato and bought it for her. It was really quite entertaining.
After gelato we found a little place to eat dinner and then went home to bed, ready for a long day again on Sunday.
We woke up pretty early on Sunday and rode the subway out away from the city to a little chapel where we had Sacrament Meeting. Then we headed out to the bus station and pushed our way onto an overcrowded bus (bus is by far my least favorite way to travel in Italy) in quest of the the Tivoli gardens on the outskirts of Rome. The gardens are certainly amazing! It is mostly made up of huge fountains that were constructed in Roman times - that means without electricity and pumps to make them work. They work by some very complicated system of air pressure and water pressure and they are all unbelievably amazing. My favorite was the Organ fountain... every hour or so, the organ opens and a short melody is played by the fountain... again using air pressure and water pressure combined. It was wonderful and we spent the whole rest of our afternoon there. We had a rather quiet evening and settled up our accounts, bid good-bye to our teachers and those who would be continuing their travels in Europe, and turned in early in anticipation of another full day.
Officially, this was the end of the program, but the Kennedy Center made a mistake and booked all of our flights for the wrong day, so we were moving hotels in the morning and would still have one more day of sight-seeing.
We all rose early, our hotel change was as easy as could be expected, and we were out in full force by late morning. We started by going to the Vatican museum, but the line was all the way around the wall of the Vatican city (longer even), so while Annie and Nicole waited in line, Morgan and I went to see St. Peter's basilica (which I had missed on the day I flew into Rome due to my um... flight delays) and it was amazing! It is indescribably enormous and beautiful. We didn't have nearly as much time as I could have wanted to look into every corner, but it was sufficient to let me decide it was my favorite cathedral that we had seen that whole trip. Then we returned to the line only to discover that it had dwindled almost out of existence! Our friends were waiting for us almost at the entrance to the museum, letting people stream past them as they waited. So our fears of not seeing the museum acquitted, we proceeded into my favorite museum of the whole trip. It was spectacular! I got to see the original Laocoon sculpture as well as many of Raphael's frescoes including the School of Athens which has always been a favorite of mine, and of course, there was the Sistine Chapel which is yet another indescribable masterpiece. The viewing conditions leave something to be desired - the room holding so many bodies you felt like a sardine, with almost nowhere to sit down and it was so crowded that the security guards could not keep people from taking pictures with or without flash simply because they could not push their way through the crowd to all the offenders (of which there were many).
But the painting was amazing indeed. We spent a few hours at the museum and only left when they kicked us out. Our few hours were monumentally insufficient and only promising myself that I will devote at least 2 whole days to the museum whenever I return to Rome can console me for all the great works I missed. In the evening, we endeavored to find some sculptures that are hidden away in small chapels on the side-streets of Rome. The sculptures we were in quest of were Michelangelo's Horned Moses and Bernini's Ecstasy of St Teresa. It took us several tries to find the right churches (quite literally, there was a Catholic church on every corner in some of these out-of-the-way spots) and as a result, we got to look through many old churches. We were also extremely lucky and got to view both sculptures we had hoped for. It was a great way to end our trip!
We ended the day by walking home because the subways were no longer running, and arriving just after curfew. We spent the night talking over the trip, sighing over what we missed, and in excitement about going home - for as much fun as we had, it was an exhausting and demanding schedule we were keeping up and we were all on classical art overload. We had seen more paintings and sculptures and prints and watercolors and such than even the most avid art connoisseurs could process in such a short time.
My flight out in the morning was about as uneventful as my trip in had been crazy. My luggage survived and was even returned to me when I got to the Seattle airport. Customs was no problem, and there weren't even any delays.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a faithful narrative of my absolutely fantastic trip to Italy. Congratulations on actually making it this far through the blog!