The last few weeks in Europe were quite an adventure. I spent my last week of school in London cramming in fun activities and somehow fitting homework in. My dear friend Jess who I have known and loved since middle school flew to London on Sunday so she could travel through Italy with me the second I finished my finals. I took my finals on Monday. My history final was…well not the greatest. And my art final was spent in the Saatchi art gallery, which is full of the weirdest things I have ever seen. Horses taxidermed into strange positions, objects made out of blood and hair, a real human brain particle stuck onto a statue, two cars crashed around poles, neon lights, styrofoam bodies covered in paint and tar, the list goes on. I loved the Tate Modern compared to the way I felt about this museum, but it was a different experience, which is always good.
Ok so maybe I did like some things at the Saatchi gallery. Actually just these giant hiker men. I thought it was really fun. It made me giggle every time I saw it. Not sure why, I guess just because they made me feel so little!
I stayed up all night packing and saying goodbyes. Two hours of sleep later, Jess, Tara (a wonderful girl from the London program), and I were off to catch a train to Paris! Paris was not very fun. Jess and I were tired, Tara was sick (she threw up twice. Once in a trash can in the middle of a bustling sidewalk, and once in the most lavish bathroom I have ever seen in a bakery called Laduree.) It was quite hysterical…and sad. Poor Tara. The day had high points though. We loved Notre Dame and staring at the Eiffel tower. That evening, we hopped on a night train to Verona, Italy!
What a weird thing, a night bus. They pack 6 people into a tiny compartment with two stacks of 3 beds. We shared a compartment with a young Italian couple and a weird Italian man. I opted to immediately fall asleep on the top bunk. It was a good decision. I was out for most of the ride. Apparently the Italians never slept.
Verona is my favorite city in Italy! It was so romantic and cute. Our hotel was right in Piazza Bra, the center of town, where the ancient Roman Arena stands. It was being prepared for the Opera festival. It was fun to see the old amphitheater being filled with giant roses and Egyptian decorations. We also visited the house of Juliet of course. It’s kind of ridiculous how a fictional story becomes so real that people even choose a place that the pretend story occurred. This is the balcony! But wait, no it’s not. It just looks like something that could have worked! Just a made up tourist attraction if you ask me. But it was still fun to pretend! And there was the statue of Juliet, that for some reason brings good luck if you touch her left breast… Another weird made up tourist attraction. Made up by some pervert no doubt…
We wandered the city, crossed the bridge, took pictures at the river. The bridges had locks locked up on every place it was possible to lock something. Just huge bunches of locks. It is a tradition for lovers to place a lock on the bridge and toss the key into the river as a sign that their love will last forever. How romantic! On the other side of the bridge were theater ruins and a castle on top of a hill. We climbed to the top where we found an incredible view of the red tiled roofs and greenery of the city.
The next morning we caught a train to Florence, another beautiful city. We spent the morning at the Duomo and an art museum that claimed to have Michelangelo’s Pieta. (We thought it was in Rome? And we were correct.) We paid to go in the stupid museum only to see that it had a different Pieta by Michelangelo, but not THE Pieta! At least it was a nice break from the blistering heat outside. The best museum was of course the one with Michelangelo’s David. What an amazing piece of art, and so huge too! I could stare at that forever. And no, not because I fancy naked men, but because of the incredible precision and perfection Mikey (as Jess and I nick-named him) was able to display. The museum had a lot of unfinished statues of Mikey’s too. It was fascinating to see his works in progress, to see a giant marble slab being transformed into a human form.
Florence became really magical the second we got away from all the tall buildings and were able to see Ponte Vecchio, a medieval bridge over the Arno River. There was live music everywhere and people just sitting with their gelato, enjoying the sunset. We decided to join in and we thought, THIS is Italy. We love this! What a beautiful, beautiful city.
Next morning: train to Siena. Going to Siena was Tara’s idea. She wanted to see Piazza del Campo, where they have had horse races since medieval times. We all loved it there! We enjoyed a delicious Italian dinner there. It took us a while to find a place to eat though. There were three middle aged men, all thin and being followed by teeny fluffy white dogs. We decided to let them do the deciding for us. They would look at a menu and we would look at it the other one on the other side of the restaurant front. If they moved on, we moved on. I don’t know why we decided to trust these definitely northern European, plaid-on-plaid wearing men and their little rat dogs, but we did. We decided if it’s not good enough for the dogs, it’s not good enough for us . So when they settled on this restaurant, we sat down at a table too. Hopefully they didn’t notice us creepily following them! They made a good choice. The food was delicious. We had the BEST bruschetta I have ever tasted in my life. And I’m not much of a meat eater, but I decided to try an Italian specialty, which I had never heard of before, Prosciutto E Melone. It’s prosciutto served with cantaloupe. Weird, but delicious. But also, not something I would get all the time. When I got home and went to my favorite place, Trader Joe’s, they were giving samples of prosciutto e melone with a little piece of mint on top! It was very yummy.
Before our dinner experience, we spent the day riding bikes around Siena. We rented them from a crazy lady who could not speak English very well. The bikes were pretty awful. I mean really uncomfortable to sit on. I mean it was like sitting on a bar. BUT we did get to see some beautiful countryside in Siena and it was worth it. The roads, however, were not biker friendly. So it was a bit scary sometimes biking right up against a stone wall with cars speeding on your right. Dad, I hope you’re not reading this…
Riding our bikes through Siena! (We had been wanting to rent bikes in every city we went to. So we finally did it in Siena and it turned out to be the hilliest, stoniest, least biker-friendly city we could have picked! But we still had a blast. And got a bit of a work out!)
We saw Jersey Shore being filmed in Florence! Lucky us. (I personally think this show is a horrible waste of time. But Jess was set on seeing these weird people. And we didn't even have to go find them. All of the sudden, there they were getting a tour of the Duomo!)
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