Various travels

Instead of writing my sociology paper which is due in a week and which I desperately need to work on, I will update everyone on everywhere I've been this semester, as I've only got 2 1/2 weeks left! (time has passed so quickly!) These are by no means in any order because I can't remember when I was where haha!

INSIDE ITALY

Rome -
Fun as usual. This was the first trip, and it was technically only a day trip for art history, but they gave us open-ended return train tickets so most of us stayed over until Saturday night. Did all the usual touristy stuff, the Colosseum, the Forum, St. Peter's etc etc. and got to go to the Galleria Borghese again (one of my favorite museums in the world) so this was a very fun overnight trip, although nothing new!

San Gimignano -
Very new, on the other hand. San Gimignano is this walled medieval city near Siena that's beautiful but has become ridiculously filled with tourists. It's famous because its still got most of its old medieval towers (unlike most Italian cities) and also for its white wine, Vernaccia. They grow the grapes in the hills surrounding the city. The views here are GORGEOUS but I wish I'd been able to go during the week when it wasn't so crowded. Definitely worth a visit if you're ever in Italy though.

Ravenna -
Not the best of field trips. I was excited for Ravenna because it's famous for its Byzantine mosaics but overall I was pretty disappointed. The mosaics, however, are beautiful, no surprise there, but the rest of the city was rather empty and lifeless.

Val d'Orcia -
Val d'Orcia is a region in southern Tuscany that we went to for a day trip with our Italian professors. By far the best field trip according to everyone here, we went to some monasteries, had a great huge lunch and also got to go to a cheese factory! Pecorino filed with black pepper = yummmm!! I wish I'd bought more!

Modena & Verona -
Another art history trip (surprise surprise)... Modena was OK, but it was rather rainy when we were there in the morning/early afternoon so that wasn't quite as fun. Good art museum though. Verona, on the other hand, I enjoyed a lot. The city is a nice mix of the ancient (gorgeous arena, churches) and modern (streets filled with designer shopping), and was a very interesting visit!

Sorrento/Capri/Naples -
Not a school trip, shocker! I'd already been to all these places but with my family so it was quite a different experience going with friends. We took a train down to Naples, got sufficiently lost trying to find the train to Sorrento and stayed there for the night (technically we stayed in San'Agnelo, thanks to Elena's incredible hostel booking skills!). We spent Saturday on the island of Capri, which was even more gorgeous than I remembered. It was the end of September and still ridiculously warm so we did some hiking through the towns and found this monastery at the top of the mountain where the monks gave us coffee and biscotti and we sat and talked for a while, enjoying the view. On Sunday we stopped on the way back to Naples at a beach town and enjoyed some sun, but unfortunately we decided to leave somewhat early and go back to Naples - bad idea. I'd only ever driven through Naples and now I'm glad I didn't stop for any amount of time, the part we walked through was so horrible that we ended up exchanging our train tickets for an earlier train just to get out of there! Fun weekend overall though.

OUTSIDE ITALY

Vienna -
My favorite place so far. The last time I was in Vienna I was maybe 5 years old, and the only thing I remember from the trip were the Spanish horses (white horses that do this kind of dance/dressage performance, v. famous). This time was fantastic, and I can totally see myself living in Vienna one day. I stayed with (VERY) distant family in their beautiful 3-story apartment (luxury!!) and they made me dinner every night, and took me out once for a typical Austrian meal. I spent my days in museums and cafes. No seriously, that was almost all I did besides wandering around. Vienna has some amazing art, and the cafes! Don't even get me started. If you're ever there, check out Hawelka, their pastries are AMAZING. I spent my entire Sunday afternoon there.

Prague -
I think I'd hyped up Prague a lot in my head because I'd been wanting to go there for so long, and so the real thing kind of let me down. But it's not like it was a bad place. I had a great hostel and had the most fun wandering around the old and new cities. Highlights = seeing the opera Don Giovanni performed by puppets and eating lunch in a cafe underneath Manet's Absinthe Drinker.

Berlin -
Extremely fun, mainly because I was there the first weekend of November and the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall was officially celebrated on November 9th. This didn't mean they couldn't celebrate for the entire time up until then! Berlin was most fun for its history, because I'm disturbingly fascinated by the Nazis and all, so it was neat to finally be there. I'd always thought that I'd been with my family when I was younger but I was wrong so it was cool to see a completely new place like this.


That's it... wow it seems like I've done a lot more. I'll be in Paris this weekend visiting my good friend Katie for Thanksgiving and then I've only got one more weekend left after that! It's so weird that this semester is almost over!


Ciao ciao,
Katherine