Always exploring Rome

 After being back in Rome for a little while, we have been quiet busy.  Our studio is really picking up and we are realizing how little time we have left to whip out a full project.  No problem right? I hope so.  Our history class is picking up and we have to study for our midterm and write a long paper on a building in Rome.  Plus italian class isnt going as well as I'd hoped.  But I guess its a good reminder that I am here for school.  And no matter where I go for school, it takes a lot of work and Im totally up for it.

So our history class has actually been really interesting.  We have been taking walks all around the city of Rome and visiting historical sites and learning a lotttt about them.  (too much sometimes).  But it gets us into parts of rome we havent been to and it makes it easier to understand what we are looking at when we walk by the history of the city.  So here are some views from the top of a castle

The castle we went to the top of, right in the center of Rome

Bridge across to the castle

Great view to St. Peter's

Food! Heres some recent excellent food. We made pancakes one morning! Sooo good.  Not italian in any way, but pancakes + syrup + cinnamon was badly needed and I had lots of them.  I also had my first italian cannoli.  I had one with chocolate filling in half of it too.  Less traditional, but not going to lie, chocolate one.  Might have to get another one of those soonish.

yum

double yum

even more yum

 A few nights ago we had a birthday dinner for Kateri.  We decided to pick a new place called La Cisterna.  This was the restaurant that inspired the well from Fantasia.  It was right near our apartment.  Kind of expensive, but I got a really good grilled chicken and potatoes.  Plus we got to see the well in the basement.

Disney Birthday Dinner

The famous well from Fantasia

 And a little taste of our visit to more modern architecture.  These were a part of our history course and some contemporary site visits too.  The great thing about this program is I definitely feel like I am being exposed to as much of Rome and its architecture as physically possible.

Stadium by Nervi

Random office/residential building that stood out

Naples, Pompeii and Vesuvius

So our trip through southern italy ended in the naples/pompeii area.  One of the largest cities in Italy, Naples seemed really diverse and more westernized than some of the other cities.  Unfortunately, it was also a lot dirtier and not nearly as nice as a lot of the other Italian cities.  There are garbage strikes where the garbage people dont pick up the garbage.  So walking through the streets there are these hugeeee piles are trash that look and smell disgusting and make the city a lot less attractive.  Not a great experience.  But despite that there are still a lot of cool parts.  Similar to Milan there was a huge indoor/outdoor gallery.

And of course when your in Naples, theres one thing you HAVE to try. Thats pizza.  Naples is famous for its pizza and rightly so.  I had a campagnola (countryside) pizza that had grilled veggies, fresh mozzerella and a perfect crust.  The restaurant even made the pizza into a heart shape for one of my friends cause they like her so much! Naples definitely has a unique personality.

Indoor/outdoor gallery space, similar to the one in Milan

Heart shaped pizza for Lindsey!

very very very good pizza from Naples

We also stopped at Pompeii too.  I had been here once before, but I was exhausted.  This time I had more energy and we had our guide telling us all about the stuff we were looking at.  That deifnitely helps.  It still amazes me to see the shapes of the bodies that had died during the disaster.  Plus how rich the city was in culture and size.

Artwork from Pompeii

Theater of Pompeii

Crazy how you can still see the forms of the bodies

 After seeing Pompeii, we went up to visit the very thing that destroyed it, Vesuvius.  We actually got to hike to the top and look down into the crater.  It was really cool.  As we climbed we walked through a layer of clouds and could see the city of Naples from the top in between the clouds.  It was cold, but cool seeing the clouds swirl into the middle of the volcano and of course grab a volcanic rock or two to take home.

Me on Vesuviusss

There was a lot of hiking...

Naples!

Lecce and Matera

Funziona! (it works! in italian)  So deleting a bunch of the old pictures ended up working and I just saved them in a work document just for fun.  But here our next stops in our trip across southern italy.

We stayed overnight twice in Lecce.  At first it seemed like a pretty boring town.  We arrived there late the first night, I had a really good pizza with fresh tomatoes and mozzarella.  It started raining so we just walked back to the hotel but it didnt seem like there was much to see.  The next day we started wandering around the historic center with our guide and there was some pretty cool stuff.  But we were still confused because just like at dinner, the area seemed completely deserted.  Barely anyone was wandering the streets or walking around and compared to the rest of the italian cities, this was very odd.  But other than that it was cool to see.

The second night we stayed in Lecce, I decided to explore and see where the heck the whole town was.  So I walked around the historic center (which we had assumed was the majority of the city) and Bam there was a hugeeee city on the other side.  Tall modern buildings, really long streets filled with shops and lights and people and everything.  Found all the people.  The streets were packed and the night life was in full blast.  Its crazy what you can find when exploring.

another super decorative church

Kateri's birthday was in a few days and we saw a really delicious looking triple mousse chocolate cake so we split it.  It was awesome.  Plus the people at the restaurant were really friendly and some old lady that lived above it stopped by and talked to us for a while.  She was pretty adorable and mildly crazy.  Very entertaining.

Happy Early Bday Kateri!

Our next stop was Matera.  This city was awesome.  It was literally on the side of a mountain/cliff and on the edge of this beautiful valley/gorge with a river running through it.  We started out by taking a guided tour through the houses that were built into the rock cliffs.  This was really cool and they went pretty deep into the rock.  Right across on the other side of the river you could see huge caves and really cool cliffs.

one of the coolest views

After we went through the entire side with the city on it, we convinced our bus driver to take a substantial detour to the other side where the cliffs are.  It just happened to be the same time that the sun was setting too.  So we got to climb, explore, and hike all over this mountainside while the sun set over an incredible town built into the rock face.  So incredible and really cool to see from both sides of the valley.  I took a seat on some rocks on the cliff and enjoyed the amazing scenery and watched the sunset for a good hour.  One of the best parts of the whole trip for sure.  Good time to relax, reflect and enjoy.

some pretty dramatic hiking

mmm sunset

Looking across the sea at Otrento

So I havent figured out the space thing yet (I tried deleting older ones but that didnt help and I tried to use another blog site, but it wasnt working that well) but this should work for now.  The link below is a link to all of the pictures I posted to facebook from Otrento.  I can just do this for each post unless I work something else out.  You get to see more pictures this way!


http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=568066&id=658945327&l=bdab3e58d1


So Otrento was a beautiful little town right on ocean.  What was really fun about it was we had no idea it was by the ocean until midway through our tour of the town and all of the sudden the streets opened up and there was the sea. bam.  and it was the perfect day to view it too.  Sunny, breezy and just the right temperature.  It had been rainy and kind of gross the day before so I was worried about our weather for the trip, but after that day it was perfect.


So from the photos you can see we visited a funny little castle with some arrows in the middle of the courtyard.  (They were obviously a modern exhibity) but the castle was pretty cool, plus from the top of the wall there were some great views of the city and the water.  Then we went to a church built around the same time that had a beautiful ceiling and some beautiful decorative elements.  We even went under the church to the underground chapel as well.


And the visit finished off with lots of spending our short amount of free time in the city on the rocks by the water.  Everyone was anxious to get their feet wet (literally) with some mediteranean sea water and enjoy the best weather we had had in a while.  

Out of space!

The blog says Im out of space so i cant post any more photos without buying more space! Im gonna try to figure it out but the posts may be delayed for another few days cause we have to work on our project too. Hopefully itll work out somehoww

Just returned to Rome again after exploring the South of Italy

 We just spent the last five days traveling throughout southern Italy and taking our last guided tour of Italy with the school.  It flew by once again but was another great experience.  Each place had something unique and fun and it was almost sad to come back to Rome at the end to rain and no more trips.  Then again, we were exhausted after spending several hours each day on the bus going from location to location.

We started our trip last Wednesday and our first stop was an olive farm.  Personally, Im not a huge fan of olives, but I figured it would be interesting.  I definitely learned a lot about olives.  Like you cant eat them right off the tree and black and green olives are made from the same olives, just different processes.  And then theres olives for oil and then theres table olives.  The place we went made table olives and they were known for their huge olives.  They definitely were huge.  I tried both colors, just to say I tried them.  They were good as far as I could tell? but it was definitely interesting to see the process and spend the day exploring the farm, something different from our usual historic tours.

Huge vats of smelly olives

Huge containers of fresh olives

A lot of olive boxes

Gigantic wine bottles in the basement of the olive building

Their olive, wine and foccaccia spread for tasting

olivesssss

 After the olive farm, we headed to this octagonal castle on a hill. The castle itself had 8 sides and each tower on all of the corners was an octagon too.  It was pretty interesting.  It was also made more interesting by the fog that rolled in as soon as we got to the top.  It was perfectly clear and then all of the sudden we couldnt see down the mountain at all.  Plus the sun was setting so it made for a cool experience.

Clear sky as we climb up

Awesome sunset 

incredibly foggy on our way down after less than an hour

Incredible time in Rome with my parents

So Rome has definitely been keeping me busy, so Im sorry for the lack of updates.  Most recently, this past weekend and the few days before that my parents came to Rome!! It was amazing.  Definitely something I needed and really appreciated.  My classes were kind of in a slump for those few days which worked out perfectly and let me spend as much time as possible with them.  We really had an amazing time and they were the best 4 days I have had here.  Its so nice to relax and spend time with family after not actually seeing anyone for 2 months.  Not to mention the fact that it was like a mini vacation because we all went sightseeing around Rome and went out to excellent restaurants and ate lots of gelato.

Our first meal together in Rome! You have no idea how good it felt after not seeing them for so long

mmm bomboletti or something like that.  Cool back street restaurant

HOME MADE BROWNIES. everyone agreed they were heavenly.  Nothing beats them

MORE HOME MADE COOKIES.  Officially the best in the world, Italians got nothing on this

Our various food trials were definitely fun.  I tried a lot of different kinds of gelato that I hadnt seen before.  Peanut (not peanut butter, but actual peanut), chestnut, chocolate with rum and chocolate with chili were all amazing.  Chocolate with chili was definitely unique and was actually a spicy chocolate gelato.  Very different and I'm glad I tried it.  These deserts below were really good custardy things too.  Got to try some delicious tiramisu, a cannoli, some great apple pastries, biscotti (chocolate, almond and pistachio) and of course lots of excellent pastas (gorgonzola stood out) and pizzas (eggplant!) and breads.

caremel custard

fruity custard

And of course in between cool Italian meals, I took my parents around the main sights of Rome.  I didn't want them to miss anything since they had 4 full days here and there is so much that is amazing in Rome.  So I think we walked miles around the city (they walked even more than I did cause I had to sit in class sometimes) but basically saw almost all of the must sees of Rome plus a lot of random interesting spontaneous finds in between too which make it that much better.

Parent sin Piazza Navona

Parents on the right in front of the Pantheon

Parents plus fountain near our studio

Parents plus Trevi

Mom plus me plus Trevi Fountain

Perfect morning = european cafe, cappucino, pastry, family and no 

Now off to our southern italy trip!