I'll preface this post by saying this: we LOVED Venice!
After taking a night train and arriving in Venice at 5:30 am, we tried to find a warm place to get some cappucini and cornetti, but had to wait out the cold in the train station for half an hour. We did find a bar open at 6 am and spent a good deal of time warming up before heading out to find our hostel. Venice is absolutely beautiful -canals everywhere! This was the perfect place for someone so enamored by water. Half an hour later of winding around quaint little streets we found our hostel and were delightfully surprised. It was the cutest little bed and breakfast run by a woman in her home. She served us a nice little continental breakfast each morning and our room and bath were huge and beautiful. Our first thoughts were: why didn't we just come here for the entire week!? The first day we wandered around oohing and ahhing at the pretty Carnevale masks and Murano glass for sale in the store windows. We also saw the Rialto Bridge and ate a pretty nice dinner at a restaurant. The second day began with frigid snow (unusual for here), then turned to rain. We took the water bus to the island of Murano, saw glass blowing, bought a lot of glass, and explored the Museum of Glass. At the end of the day we enjoyed a Vivaldi concert of the Four Seasons. Dare I forget to mention that we took an evening gondola ride!?! It was also freezing cold in Venice (although our hostel was nice and toasty). The last day we went to San Marco Square, took pictures of everyone dressed up for Carnevale, and toured the Doge's Palace. This was by far the best place I have ever been to on a vacation. Absolutely beautiful! We were a little reluctant to return home after such a great trip.
Believe it or not, the first part of my title says "Athens, Greece." In Greek. Thank goodness most Grecians spoke English because that alphabet is nothing like mine! Anyway, the first four days of our spring break were spent in Athens where we had a moderately good time. Moderate is probably being generous. I'll do my best to recap our adventure and explain why we didn't love Greece.
Day One:
After arriving at the airport and being massively confused about how to get to center city, we found our hotel and tried to check in. However, our hotel reservation had been moved to a sister hotel down the street, so we had to try to find that one. Hotel Delta was not as nice (we think) as the Neos Olympos Hotel where we were supposed to be, but we made friends with the host (he made us tea in the evenings) and we were only paying 11 Euros a night. Fair I guess.
Our super lovely bathroom without a shower curtain
After checking in, we set out to explore. We found the beautiful old part of the city, admired the Acropolis, climbed Mars Hill and talked with a man named Apollo, and visited the Acropolis Museum. We finished the evening at a super touristy restaurant in the Plaka district where I had yummy spanakopita (spinach pies).
Day Two: This entire day was spent at the hospital. One of my roommates got really sick and decided she needed to go to the emergency room. Do you think it would be easy to find a hospital on Saturday? No, most of them are closed! I guess nobody gets sick on the weekend... After that fiasco was over we did get to see the changing of the guards at the Parliament Building in Syntagma Square.
Day Three: This day also happened to be a failure. We thought it would be fun to take a ferry to a Greek Isle, spend the day in a cute little town looking around, and admire a beautiful beach. We clearly didn't do our research, though, because the island of Aegina was dead as a doornail. And freezing cold. Very few shops were open, so we took a bus up to the monastery and church of Agios Nektarios. It was beautiful, but we definitely did not need three hours to explore there. Unfortunately, the bus did not return for two more hours and the area was desolate. We never did get to see the Aphaia Temple that day and were just thankful to get back to Athens.
We had to wear skirts to enter the monastery
Day Four: This was probably the best day in terms of seeing a lot of things. We did the mandatory visit of the Acropolis and admired the Parthenon.
We also walked through the ancient Agora (marketplace) and then went to the first Olympic Stadium. It held the first modern Olympics in 1896, but is also the site of the ancient Olympic stadium.
Finally, we went to the Archaeological Museum before returning to our hotel for the final evening. I forgot to mention that our hotel room was probably about -10 degrees Fahrenheit, so we slept with 2 sweaters, long sleeves, 2 scarves, and curled up in the tiniest balls imaginable to try to stay warm. While Greece was an interesting and alright trip, we were elated to return to our cozy apartment in Rome. After all, there's no place like Rome. ;)
It is required that we attend two field trips for my Modern Italian history course, so I decided to share some pictures from the two that I did. The first was a celebration of Giuseppe Garibaldi, one of four heroes of the Italian unification. We didn't understand anything, nor did we stay for very much, but we did meet Anita, a descendant of Garibaldi. We were also able to see how much the Italians love Garibaldi.
Garibaldi's descendant, Anita (in the red)
The second trip was in honor of Giordano Bruno. Bruno was an astronomer who was found guilty of heresy by the Catholic Church and burned at the stake. Today, he is thought of as a martyr for scientific thought. As might be expected, he is also revered by many who are opposed to the Catholic Church. His statue is in the center of Campo dei Fiori, so we walked to the celebration after class and watched the festivities and speeches for about an hour.
I thought it might be fun to give you a taste of where I live, the places we frequent, and let you see where we attend classes. So here's a post of pictures!
1) A tabaccheria...where I buy my stamps and everyone else buys cigarettes and lottery tickets.
2) Carrefour: the supermarket down the street. We shop here, at the fresh market, and at another grocery store, Todis, which is cheaper but farther away.
3) All of the street signs in Rome (and throughout Italy) are posted on buildings. This one is of the Piazza down the street from the Residence.
4) Trionfale Market: the fresh market where we try to buy most of our fruits and vegetables.
5) These pharmacies (farmacia) -always indicated by a green plus -are everywhere in Rome...thankfully I haven't had to visit one yet!
6) Villa Caproni: this is Temple's school building (center of the picture), right across the Tiber River.
7) Student lounge inside Villa Caproni
8) Computer lab at school
9) Wall of students outside the library and the computer lab
10) La Feltrinelli: the Italian version of Borders or Barnes and Noble
11) Corner of the street where we live
12) The Residence! I live in the building back on the left (it's hard to see in this picture). The laundry room is, of course, in the back building on the right. They're building a new laundry room in the basement of my building, but it won't be finished until we leave...go figure!
So there you have it! There is obviously much much more that I see each day, but these are the basics of a typical day of my life in Rome.
I have returned from Spring Break and thoroughly enjoyed myself. Now that I am amidst reading and papers again, I decided I should pause to let you all know that I did take plenty of pictures but I can't post them right away. My laptop charger has conveniently decided to die while I am over here in Italy and my battery is nearly dead. Somehow I have to write a paper and use friends' computers to get by until I figure out what to do. Everything expensive just has to die while one is not working, doesn't it? Hopefully I'll be able to update you on my break SOON!
