Prego!

First Italian food in Italy!

                Next on our trip was Italy. On a long series of trains we made our way to Lyon, then Geneva, then Milan, then finally Florence. It was a long journey, but on the way we saw some spectacular views of the Swiss and Italian Alps. One time we passed by a beautiful lake surrounded by houses that stacked up the surrounding hills. Inside the lake were tiny islands that were occupied by mansions and monasteries. It was out of a postcard or a movie or something. It was absolutely beautiful.  We arrived in Florence in the evening, grabbed a great dinner of pasta, chicken, and wine, and went to bed. Florence is one of my favorite places that we went. The city is small and easily walk able, and the Duomo, or Florence Cathedral is amazing. Sofia and I just happened to turn a corner and see it, and it was definitely a “jaw dropping” moment.  Florence was characterized by art, and art history. We went to the Uffizi museum and saw some amazing renaissance works like Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, and we saw Michelangelo’s David at the Accademia (for free as it was National Culture Week) and he too was beautiful and jaw drop worthy. I thought that he was going to just step down from his pedestal and walk around the room any moment (Also, he’s much taller and larger than I imagined). We went to the Pitti Palace, seeing where the Medici lived, sketched in the Boboli Gardens, walked along the Ponte Vecchio,v visited the tombs of Galileo, Dante, Machiavelli, and Michelangelo,  ate copious amounts of gelato, pizza, and pasta, and made an extra side trip to Pisa to see the leaning tower, which was pretty leany. Florence was absolute heaven. It was definitely a drastic change from the ornate and grand streets of Paris, which I loved. But Florence was so small and winding, filled with spires and surrounded by gorgeous rolling hills, there’s no way to compare the two.

I'm in a cloister!

Laurentian Library cloister

Duomo!

It's Machiavelli's tomb

Michelangelo's tomb

Palazzo Vecchio

Rape of the Sabine Women

Pisa

After two days or so in Florence Sofia and I made our way to Rome. Arriving around midnight, we found our way in rain to Sofia’s friend’s apartment, a little bit outside of Rome.  Rome was a bit of a different experience. It was overcast our first day there, perhaps leading to my slightly negative impression of the place. Our first day was made almost entirely of standing in lines. It wasn’t as bad as we had anticipated, but we waited 45min to get into the Vatican Museum, then another 30 to get into the Basilica. In the Vatican museum, we got to see the Sistine Chapel ceiling (which was amazing to see in person rather than in slides), the Papal gardens, the torso Belvedere, Raphael’s wall paintings, and the Laocoon. It was basically every art history class I had ever taken. After that we entered the Basilica of Saint Peter. It was the most stunningly beautiful church I had ever seen on the inside. Much of it was gilded, but in just the right way. We saw Michelangelo’s Pieta within, and many other papal monuments. We even went down to see the papal tombs beneath the church. It was clear from all of the flowers on his tomb, as well as from all of the pictures around Rome that Pope John Paul II is still very much beloved in Rome. We also Saint’s Peter’s resting place, which just kind of blew my mind. The Basilica overall was a fairly religiously powerful place, inspiring absolute awe.

St. Peter's

Our other full day in Rome consisted of the Coliseum, the Roman Forum, the Pantheon, the Circus (horse racing), and more gelato and pizza. It was a much sunnier day, so I enjoyed and appreciated Rome much more. Once you really get into Rome proper, ancient sites seem to just sprout out of every corner. I was amazed that so many of the buildings like the Coliseum have been able to survive in the condition they’re in. One would think that at least one of the sackings of Rome or some modernizing project would have resulted in their destruction. One of the interesting structures that we saw in Rome was an enormous monument in the Piazza Venezia, a behemoth built by Mussolini as an assertion of power, basically a monument to fascism. It’s so large that the hollow bronze horses that top the structure, before their installation, housed whole dinner parties inside their torsos. It just struck me because of its enormity, and also that I had never seen it in any pictures of Rome. We were pretty tuckered after our long days of touring Rome both days, so we didn’t do much in the way of parties or clubs. We did make a nice dinner one night, accompanied by a classy $0.95 bottle of wine. Overall, Rome was a whirlwind of tours, although there were moments when it occasionally slowed down so that I could enjoy a beautiful sunset or a spectacular panoramic view over the whole of Rome.

Me and the Coliseum

Sunset in Rome

Trevi fountain with Sofia and her friend Jenny

Following the helter skelter life in Rome, Sofia and I happily arrived in Venice. We did almost nothing in Venice, I can say with content. We had become so exhausted of the touring life from Rome that we decided to take it easy with our good friend from Egypt Sarah, who had an internship in Venice, and therefore had an apartment.  Venice was just like it seems in the picture. It is…like a fairy tale. It’s enchanting. The winding streets and bridges are filled with pastry shops, mask shops, paper shops, clothing shops, glass shops, and gelato stands. We went to flea markets, and beautiful churches. We even saw Titian’s tomb and his painting of the Ascension of the Virgin. We spent about two days in Venice itself, just wandering for the most part. We got to see San Marco’s square and cathedral, which was great as expected, and walked across the Rialto Bridge. On the first evening, I, Sofia, our friend Emma, and Sarah cooked, listened to music, and drank some wine. On the second evening it was Passover, so Sarah took us to the Jewish Quarter and we went to an Orthodox service in a beautiful synagogue, and then went to Pesach dinner, or to the Seder. We had a lot of fun at this, and the guys that were running it were very accommodating to my general ignorance.

San Marco in Venice

Our home cooked meal on the floor. Shebab!

Our last day in Venice was actually spent in Ravenna. Sarah’s program was taking their group to this small town, and we got to tag along for free! Ravenna was the birthplace of Dante Alighieri and also home to a myriad of incredible churches featuring fantastic Byzantine mosaics. We went to the church of St. Apollinaire first, which was an early example. I recalled this church’s mosaics from my AP art history, noting it as the first time I had realized that sheep were supposed to have large fluffy tails…Who knew? From there we went to a 2 hour lunch, which was nice, although I would have preferred more exploring time. After lunch, we went to San Vitale, the crown jewel of Byzantine mosaics (in my opinion). This was once again, a jaw drop moment. The mosaics were stunning! I loved how the gold tiles had been placed strategically so that at any one place, at least some of the image would shimmer. This decorative program featured Christ, Justinian, and his beautiful wife and queen Theodora. She had actually been in charge of the aesthetic plan of his churches, placing herself on the right hand side of Christ from the viewer’s point of view. My photos hardly do this place justice. The bright colors of the tiles were astounding to say the least. After San Vitale, we visited its mausoleum, which sat right behind the church. This too was coated in mosaics, creating a lovely sparkling effect right when you walk in. The mausoleum was kept very dark for the safety of the tiles, which kind of made it a little spooky and eerie. We topped off our day of mosaics with one more church…which was great, but not as much of a show stopper as San Vitale, so I don’t have much to say on it. We departed from Ravenna around 5:30 in the evening and got back to Venice at around 8. It was just enough time to pack and enjoy another Seder dinner with Sarah.

Ravenna mosaics

Ravenna mosaic

As much as I loved Venice, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the city wasn’t actually a real city. The whole thing kind of felt like “Venice land”; the buildings seemed designed specially to create the perfect aesthetics for tourists’ enjoyment, and it was like people can’t actually live in Venice. Almost everyone we walked by was a tourist, and we definitely didn’t pass by Laundromats or hardly any grocery stores. However, my friend Sarah lives there and seems to do okay. I just couldn’t shake the feeling that so much of Venice, although I loved it, wasn’t entirely real.

From Venice, Sofia and I sadly and reluctantly moved on to Napoli, or Naples. Saying a sad farewell to Sarah, we boarded our night train. We thought we would have sleepers, which we had been told were recliner like chairs. Instead, we had airplane seats with a larger head cushion. This was an awful, awful night. At roughly 2am, a large group of Italians entered our car. They paid no attention to the fact that Sofia and I were obviously trying to sleep, and chattered loudly for hours. To top that off, I was awoken, a half an hour later, to a man sitting on my chair. I was hugging my knees lying against the back of the chair, so part of the seat was exposed, and this guy sits right on the exposed part, partially sitting on my thigh. I turned and looked at him with a “what the hell’ face, then he said something in Italian, and I said “English?”, and he just ignored me and continued to sit. I had no clue what to do from there, so I fell back asleep. Eventually on of the Italians was kind enough to explain that I was sitting in his seat. So we examined our tickets and we had the same seat number. It was the train company’s mistake. Regardless, why did he decide to sit on me rather than attempt to explain things?

So, Sofia and I got hardly any sleep and arrived in Naples the next day. We had been planning a full day, and went about our plans anyway, despite the exhaustion. That first day we went to Pompeii. Pompeii!!!! It was crazy cool. Coming from an archaeological site in Egypt, where the dry climate allows for great site preservation, I was astonished at the amount that had been preserved at Pompeii. The walls were practically at their original height, and the wall paintings, ugh, don’t even get me started or I will drool all over my computer. The site was enormous too. It was a whole city, streets and all from 2000 years ago! We saw their necropolis, their mansions, their brothel (which was pretty funny), their stadium, their forum, and even their bakeries. The ovens were even still there! All of this was extremely exciting and left a huge grin on my face. But, then the interesting flip side of Pompeii, are the body casts. Some of the body casts had been removed from their original locations and placed behind glass. The site of these would sober even the nerdiest archaeology/ history nerd. There was a pregnant woman hugging herself, a dog, and many children. We passed by some body casts in a far flung garden, left where they were found, evidently in an attempt to escape the city. Through these casts you could still see the bones! One man had himself propped up on his arm looking at his companions. It was fascinating and heartbreaking at the same time. These were people from 2000 years ago, simply frozen in their last moments.

Me with Wall paintings <3

Amphitheater!

After spending a few hours at Pompeii, Sofia and I made our way back to Napoli and hunted down the “best pizza place in Naples”. Napoli is known as the birthplace of pizza, so we were definitely getting some. After some trial and error, we found the place, and ended up having dinner with another American named Chris, who had heard us speaking English and, as a solo traveler, wanted to have someone to talk to at his meal. He was a 25 year old hockey player who had come from Paris, apparently playing hockey professionally there. The three of us got five pizzas together. Yep, five whole pizzas. We even developed an ingenious system to be able to share all of these pizzas, which all together took up most of the area of the table. We decided to rotate them in a circle. We would each eat a slice of one pizza, then pick up all of the trays together and rotate, having a piece on the next tray. It was delicious!!! We went home and crashed very quickly in our beds due to general exhaustion and fullness that night.

The five pizzas, sorry it's blurry

The next day was Capri day! Capri is an island off of Napoli. We took an early morning ferry out, hiked about 6km across the steep island (I fell on my face at one point on some stairs, it was classy), and planted ourselves on the “beach” for about 4-5 hours. I say “beach” because this thing was made of large pebbles, not sand. But regardless, there was sun, water, and beautiful cliffs around, so we made the best of it. After our many hours in the sun, we grabbed some more gelato, and took the ferry home in time to grab our bags from our previous hostel and move to a different one across the street. Our hostel had booked up for the next day before we could get beds, so we had to change. After this silly business, we made our way in Napoli to find a great spot for dinner. We had read in our guidebook of a restaurant that offers a 10 euro dinner that included first course, second course, wine, and bread. Too good of a deal to pass up.

"beach" on Capri

Island of Capri

Upon getting there, we found that we had come to the most ridiculously Italian place imaginable. The manager yelled at the crowd on the street who were waiting for tables in order to place people on a list for entry, guests leaving the place slipped the money for the meal into the large wad of cash that the manager held, and a beefy bald man stalked around the place, acting as a bouncer. Once we got on the list, we only had to wait for about 20 minutes, watching a parade of people entering the restaurant, most of them stopping to hug and kiss the manager on the cheek. Once we were seated, our waiter yelled to us and our two fellow tables, the specials he had for the night. You were given about 10 seconds to decide, yelling your decision back. Sofia and I looked at him a bit stupefied, and he ran to get us menus. But in the end I just pointed to what the guy next to me got, and I had my food within seconds. I’m still not sure of what I got, but it was pretty good.  After the mystery pasta, I got a steak, which was really yummy. After we had finished our second course, had finished almost all of our wine, and eaten all of our bread, we were hustled out of our seats by the wait staff, and left the restaurant, shoving two 10 euro bills into the manager’s hands. So Italian.

The next day, or our last day in Italy consisted of errand running. Sofia sent packages, we went grocery shopping, and then we grabbed a quick lunch before setting off on a train to the coastal town of Bari. From Bari, we took a 16 hour ferry to Patras, Greece, then a bus from Patras to Kiota, then a train from Kiota to Athens.  Italy had been stupendous! Incredible art, my favorite foods, and great company: bellisimo!