They say that once you get back from vacation you're supposed to
write everything down so you don't forget it. Well it's been about four
months so I'm hoping I haven't forgotten too too much.
Last fall Sarah had the opportunity to go over to study abroad in Italy for
the semester. Now unlike other students to whom "study abroad" means
"go to a foreign country and drink and do drugs" (coughcough Prague
coughcough), Sarah actually wanted to study. Which ended up
causing problems with her roommates. Anyway, the students had a Fall
break for a week during their semester during which time a lot of the
students were booking flights to places all over Europe. Thing was Sarah had absolutely no desire to hang out with any of the girls
since they were catty, intoxicated jerks and was facing a fall break of
staying at the center all by herself for a whole week. Since we knew
about her travails with her classmates through emails back and forth Mom
and I decided to take a week long trip to Italy to see her. Dad had to
stay home since small-one is still in school and he was going to have
to take her on college visits in the spring anyway. I had already been
to Italy with the church choir when I was in college, so I had a
semi-grasp of what traveling in Italy was about. After a whirlwind of
Mom reading every tour guide book of Italy the library had ever owned,
reading a lot of blogs, me getting Italian language software and
learning how to say "would you like to come back to my place" in
Italian, getting permission to take leave, and packing we were finally
on our way to meet Sarah in Italy!
(Just to put
your minds at ease so you don't have to wait till the end of these posts
about Italy, Sarah eventually told her professor how her
roommates had been acting. Her professor then had a talk with them that
was harsh enough that they were perfect angels for the rest of the
semester and she finished out the semester and returned safe and sound
to the USA and now has nothing but fond memories and desperately wants
to go back. Oh how short-term our memories become.)
So
Mom and I hopped on a non-stop plane to the Rome airport and after
getting through dinner, trying (and failing) to fall asleep as we flew
through the night, and breakfast we landed in Rome. We then caught the
train from the airport to the main train station in Rome (termini) and
got on a regional train to castiglion fiorentino where Sarah's
school was located. Not going to lie, we were so insanely exhausted
that it's a good thing the German women tourists next to us on the train
didn't have sticky fingers because we both were out on the 2.5 hour
ride!
We get to the Castiglion train station and see Sarah on the train platform. We call out to her since she is down
a little bit further, and she turns and sees us and promptly bursts
into tears! We couldn't use our cell phones in Italy so we were just
relying on last nights emails about which time to meet at the train
station, and when Sarah didn't see us get off the train she
thought she'd missed us or something and had been so looking forward to
seeing us that she just got really sad but no worries, she recovered
super fast. Then we took a massive hike up a lot of hills with our
suitcases in unseasonably warm weather to see her place.
There
she is in her room! Showing off her clothes steamer (she gets that
have-to-iron-everything tendency from Mom. I didn't get that gene.)
The purse hanging on the blue armoire is one she got in Florence at an
outdoor market and she liked it so much she never wore it in Italy
because she was so worried it would get slashed!
We
went out to see the town and get some lunch, but apparently when the
students get a fall break, the town decides they can get a fall break
too. So all the places she wanted to take us were closed, but we found
some pizza and had our first lesson in the interesting way people do
things in Italy. Fact #1 eat your pizza with a fork.
Then
it was back to her room to grab our stuff and race down to the train
station to catch the train to Bologna where our hotel was. By the time
we got to Bologna it was pitch black but it was only 7:30pm so I wasn't
too worried yet. Still, walking by the train station at night was a bit
dicey. We looked at the map and made it to the street we needed to be
on but I swear everything looks ominous in the dark, especially around
public transportation. We started walking down the street and it turned
into an outdoor mall surprisingly, complete with bad pizza shops just
like a food court! We passed a church and some more shops, some
expresso bars closed for the night and were wondering if we would have
to go walking forever until randomly mom goes "Oh I think it's here."
Yep, it was a glass storefront with a red curtain covering the window,
if she hadn't looked up right then who knows where we would have ended
up! Anyway, we check in and get to our room. It took us a good hour
and a talk with a random person in the hallway to figure out the room
lights. There aren't switches there are light panels with buttons.
When you walk in the lights stay on for a minute or two then go off and
you're plunged into darkness until you open the front door. Turns out
you have to put you key card in the slot by the front door to get the
lights to stay on. Honestly that's only half the battle because it took
us a good five minutes each night to hit all the buttons in a random
configuration to get them to all shut off.
Oooookay so
logistics aside, it was now time to start vacationing! We placed our
suitcases down and went out to find dinner with Sarah's
classmate. By now, mom and and I had been up for more than 24 hours but
being that it was 8pm and people in Italy eat at 9pm or 10pm we were
still early. We wandered around and found a sidewalk restaurant to eat
at. Problem was it was outdoors and this is Italy. There was so much
smoke! Everyone smokes in Italy and it was ridiculous. Anyway we
stayed down wind for most of dinner. I got pizza for dinner and mom got
pasta with bolognese sauce because . . . we were in Bologna! Sarah got a pizza with and egg on it and a side of veggies because
she was starved for vegetables. From the way she tells it all of Italy
should have scurvy by now since all they seem to eat is olive oil,
meat, and pasta. Then we went back to the hotel and fell into a deep
sleep!
The next day we had decided that it wasn't going
to be in the budget to take a tour of parma to see where parmesean
cheese and balsamic vinegar were made so we made the executive decision
to wander around Bologna. But first, it was Sunday so we needed to find
church. Lucky for us, we knew exactly where one was.
We popped out of the hotel, turned
left, and followed the glowing cross to church. Yes that is the church
we passed on the way to the hotel the night before and yes that is a
church in essentially a strip mall! Mass was fine, it was all in
Italian and no one liked us but hey we got mass in. The best part was
it was super close to the hotel . . . Let me explain, they were doing
some recognition thing with the high school kids and it went on and on
and I REALLY needed to use the restroom!!! Like Really REALLY needed to
go and I had no idea where the bathrooms were so I walked out of church
during the preparation of the gifts, walked the three minutes to our
hotel, used the restroom, and walked back to finish out the last half
hour of church! I mean really how random but hey it worked!
After
church it was time to explore. We started with the park across from
the hotel. Like I mentioned before, Sarah actually took her
classes seriously. One of the things all the students had to do was
take pictures of certain elements they'd see. She took pictures of
ironwork, doors, and here she is taking a picture of a tree because well
she is in landscape architecture! Go figure I know.
Mum and Sarah. This is one of my favorite pictures of the whole trip :)
Moi and Sarah. Again just wandering around Bologna.
We
found some sandwiches for lunch (finding a place to eat that wasn't a
sit-down restaurant was a big challenge this trip). But this is where
Mom's love of salami was born!
After
taking our lunch break we continued to tour the other half of Bolonga.
Not kidding, in the morning we went left out of our hotel and in the
afternoon we went right. Pretty much the thing to do in Italy is go in
all the churches. Almost every church is open to the public and they
are all beautiful! Here's a mural on the wall in one. I love that it's
3D! So cool! And of course I had command of the camera so I took a
picture :)
Here's
the rest of the interior of the church. Since all the murals on the
wall were made of stone we were able to use cameras inside. I can also
attest that even though it looks beautiful, the acoustics are
horrendous, but hey when they were built mass was said in latin so it's
not like anyone needed to understand anything anyway . . . !
Since
this was more of a last minute choice to tour Bologna we kind of just
wandered along and looked at outdoor stuff. Sarah had a thing
with one of her classmates where they would climb every tower they came
across. Considering the tower on the left had to be dismantled to it's
current height because of structural instability, mom and I vetoed the
whole climbing thing. This is where some random college guys asked me
to take their picture. I don't think they realized I was with my mom
and sister ;)
This
isn't the church we were in previously in the day, this was the main
church in the square. I must admit this was the least impressive church
we were in the whole time. Can you say boring facade? According to Sarah it had to do with political wars that the facade wasn't
finished back in the day, but still, eh. The only cool thing about this
church was the astrological mural on the floor. It was a line that had
the times of day on it and also the days of the year. Based on how the
sun hit the floor through a window you could tell the time and read it
like a calendar. Also it used to have murals on the walls, frescos,
that had been removed by a wealthy man at one point in history. They
had since been sold to museums and one is actually in a gallery in DC.
We all plan on going to see it at some point.
This
apparently was one of the main attractions in Bologna due to the um . .
. impressive proportions of the statue . . . and since I knew my
grandparents might read this post, I took a far away photo ;)
Since
it was getting dark it was time for us to stop touristing and find some
dinner. We found a promising place, went to the hotel to change, and
walked back to this restaurant which was right around the corner. Have I
mentioned that it was the most amazingly wonderful thing to be able to
head back to the hotel for clean bathrooms and water? We would miss
this later in the trip :/
Back to the restaurant,
this one was inside and much better than the night before. I try to
always have wine with dinner in Italy, so mom and I each had a glass. I
got pasta this time but mom and Sarah got pizza. It's almost
cliche to order pizza in Italy but it was the cheapest item on the menu
and it was big and filling so hey we were cliche!
One
of the regions we wanted to see in Italy was the lake region up in
northern Italy. No we didn't go to lake Como where george clooney owns a
villa. We were going to go to a grouping of three lakes and bike ride
around them but it turns out it would have taken a lot of hours to get
to one city and transfer trains to get to another city where you can
rent bikes (no guarantee the bike rental place would be open on Sundays)
and then somehow get to the lakes. So we went to Mantova instead and
walked around the lakes they had there. It was so misty that day! But
it was really nice to explore a city essentially deserted. You got all
the charm of an Italian city without having to deal with actual
Italians!
When we got there we found a cute little inner city garden.
We then walked to the lake, and . . . well . . . It was misty!
I thought these trees looked really cool so I made Sarah pose while I took a picture.
All
along the path around the lakes were these physics related activities
for kids (and adults lol) to do. This one is showing you that it's a
lot easier to lift an object if you are farther away from the fulcrum.
It was like and outdoor science museum and we took full advantage being
the only ones outside.
It
also had rained recently so the path was muddy. Here you can see that
the fog lifted a bit as we went farther on our walk. This was actually
right after I made mom and Sarah traipse over a super muddy drainage
pipe/goat pathway to get to the rest of the path. We were trying to
reach the end so we could get to a restaurant the tour office lady had
told us about but we never saw the restaurant (and we walked for a
while) and the path from here on out was essentially all puddle. So we
turned around and walked on the street and sidewalk back to the dry
path.
Back
in Mantova proper, we were going to go look in the gardens directly
behind me as I'm taking this picture, but they were closed on Sundays.
We were also going to go into the church (you can see the duomo behind
the tower. Btw "duomo" just means "dome" in Italian) but it was closed
from 1pm-3pm and we had to catch the train at 3:30pm.
So
we instead spent our time eating a delicious lunch at a well reviewed
restaurant. I think all three of us can agree that this was the best
meal we ate in Italy! Pumpkin is the traditional ingredient of the
region. I had pumpkin ravioli, Mom had pizza with pumpkin on it, and Sarah had "the best salad ever." Haha I can remember what I ate but
remembering what others ate is tough. This restaurant also had the best
bathrooms of the trip. They were new and quite nice, although I did
end up accidentally using the mens . . .
Since
the gardens were closed and so was the church, we just walked around
for a bit after lunch. We came upon a statue of dante (he's there in
the background) and couldn't resist the opportunity to emulate a famous
Italian :)
It took all of us posing the other person to get the placement of the hands just right!
Ah Dante, such an inspiration for photographers.
Now
this little church became our theme of the whole trip! We were
wandering around, minding our own business when we stumbled across this
little church! Or in italian: piccolo chiesa. Mom loved the fact that
it was so small and dainty, and yet still so intricate. It was such a
smaller scale from the grandeur of the cathedrals we'd been seeing. In
every town we went on from here on out we always looked for a piccolo
chiesa :)
This
was the interior of the little church. So pretty with all the white
marble. I'm guessing it used to be a family chapel for the large
residence under construction next to it right outside. Now I wonder if
anyone uses it.
This was our last look at Mantova before we got on the train and headed back to Bologna. It almost looks like Venice!
Once
we got back to Bologna, we grabbed some lettuce, bread, ham, and cheese
from the grocery store and had a picnic dinner in our hotel room.
After dinner we made a quick trip outside to a gelateria for Mom's first
gelato in Italy and our parting salvo to Bologna. We packed up and
were off to Rome the next day!
Before I do the Rome post, I want to write a few things down about Bologna and our time here.
1.
The hotel was strange to us at first, for example, the lights not being
obvious. There was also the shower which wasn't really a shower, just a
tub with a glass door and a hand-held sprayer. We found out the hard
way that the glass half partition did not have a water-tight seal so we
had to point the shower sprayer at the wall and only rinse off with it.
Also there was only enough wifi to support one person on the internet
at a time. Made it hard to research where to go the next day. But
there were good things about it to. The breakfast at this hotel was the
best we had. They had servers who would bring you an individual pot of
hot water so you could make your tea. They had fruit and hard boiled
eggs and toast and nutella (my fav breakfast) and yogurt. It wasn't
extravagant but it was quite nice. It also looked nice, it had that
Italian charm.
2. We became experts at the train system during
our stay here. We also became aware of how expensive train rides were.
Our plan, before we got to Italy, was to take the train everywhere.
Well once we realized that it was 50 euro per person one way to some of
these places we had to adjust our thinking. I will admit to having a
mini-meltdown in the hotel because I was so sad that the prices of the
tickets were preventing us from going where we wanted to go and making
Mom and Sarah not have a good trip. They assured me it was all
fine and we learned to roll with the punches and make the most out of
everything we were able to do. Sarah really helped us learn the
ropes of the train system. Like plane tickets, the earlier you bought
your tickets, the better the fares. The cheap seats would get snatched
up fast. So even though we only rode the train to Mantova and back
while staying in Bologna, we were looking up fares at night and at the
station during the day to buy tickets for our upcoming trip to Rome. To
add to the money debate, there are different classes of trains you can
take. There is the typical passenger train where you can buy first or
second class tickets. But there is also the high speed train. This
train is pretty expensive, but we decided that instead of riding the
passenger train for 5 hours + to get from Florence to Rome we would buy
the high speed tickets and get there in 1 hour 45 minutes. To us, that
was worth it. So figuring out which ticket to buy was a challenge, but
then there was the challenge of actually purchasing the tickets.
Bologna wasn't that touristy so, as Americans, we stuck out like sore
thumbs. At the train stations, the gypsies would try and offer to
"help" us. Sarah warned us that this was a scam and the person
helping you would actually be the distraction so someone else could come
up and rob you. Thankfully we could spot the gypsies easily and buying
tickets turned into a full out battle strategy! Mom and Sarah
would both be at the kiosk buying the tickets and I would stand back to
back with them and stare down or yell at any gypsy who came close. But
we never got pickpocketed so I guess this strategy worked!
3.
People in Bologna were weird. It was a college town so there were a ton
of teenagers and they were all what we would term as rebellious. They
all just looked like delinquents to me! They would be rude, mostly to Sarah and me, by crowding us off the sidewalks and such. After a
while we didn't let it bother us. The people in Bologna also like to
wear the biggest, most intense winter jackets . . . in 70 degree
weather! Not kidding, it was so unseasonably warm while we were there
but everyone else was bundled up to their necks in down puffer coats. I
saw one baby in a stroller who looked so miserable! You'd think they'd
be sweating profusely, but they kept at it. Also, everyone had hair straight out of the 80s. Perms were everywhere and people had shaved one side of their head. So weird. If you're going to rebel don't turn into rejects from america's past, seriously! I wish I could have told them how ridiculous they looked ;)
4. I truly don't
mean to sound to negative in these blogs posts, we did have a good time
and I think all of us were really glad we went on this trip, I just
don't think any of us expected it to be so much work. What we like to
say, looking back, is that we took a trip not a vacation. Overall, we
have memories to last a life time (most of which I'm sharing with you!)
and consider ourselves extremely lucky to have been able to travel to
Italy for a week. It's not something I ever dreamed I would be doing.
But at the same time, I'm not going to sugar coat it, it was work and at
times it was hard. So if you're planning on traveling to Europe or any
other place in the world, it's going to be the chance of a life-time
but it's not all sunshine and roses like you hear almost everyone tell
you.
But enough of the maudlin, next time we're off to ROME!
