My space for everything to do with my study abroad.
Pictures from Verona
Romeo and Juliet cookies!
What a lovely sunset.
Blocked the flash = eerie red glow
:)
:D
Juliet’s house
Oh hey Verona. I see you have Roman ruins under the street.
There’s also a shop for priestly vestments.
The Giardini Giusti!
:)
Making my way through the labyrinth
Thumbs up, Boyfriend!
At the top of the gardens
steals again
Pictures from Venice
Our first sunset. So beautiful.
Taking a vaporetto down the Grand Canal.
The Guggenheim
St. Mark’s Square, as seen from the Grand Canal.
Venice, as seen from the vaporetto.
On the Rialto.
Taking the vaporetto to Murano.
The Glass Comet!
The lovely Burano!
St. Mark’s Square again.
The gorgeous Venetian masks I bought for my sister and me.
Pictures from Genoa
The view from our hostel window
The gardens we planned on seeing
The pirate ship we planned to tour (it didn’t look like there was much to see inside, so I don’t feel that bad)
Music at the International Festival!
Delicious food
Can anyone tell what this says? I can’t
The Duomo
Cooties!
The street of palazzos
Itty-bitty hummingbird
Sea lions!
It’s Been a While (Week 3 at Schloss B.)
So it’s the middle of week 3 here at Schloss Brunnenburg and I finally have a little time to work on this. We’re having a chili night (meaning we Texans cook it), but I’ve done my part already. So here’s a recap of what I’ve been up to:
This past weekend I went to Florence, Pisa and Genoa. It was a great weekend. The trip group included my girlfriend and me. So we didn’t have to worry about deciding where to eat or wait for groups of people, which is very tough while travelling… But anyways, we went to Florence first. Florence was pretty nice. It was pretty easy to get around the city, but many of the streets we had to walk on were kind of sketchy. But we got in pretty late on Wednesday night, and we were staying in a hostel room with four other people. They were all asleep when we got there, but some girls from the UK were still up, and they gave us suggestions on how to do stuff the next day, including telling us that the Accademia (where Michelangelo’s David is) was going to be free the following night.
The following day, GF and I went to the Uffizi and the Duomo. The Uffizi was pretty cool, but the Duomo was a completely different experience. We first went inside, which was pretty and simple, but still an impressive piece of architecture. After that, we decided to go to the top of the dome. The line for this was about an hour long. When we finally got inside (AC!), we bought our tickets and started our ascent. The stairs started as rectangular ones, but after a couple floors worth of stairs, they started to change to spiral or straight stairs. Mostly, though, the passageways were getting narrower. At one point, you have to walk on a path that is a little less than one person wide, and this path has nothing underneath it because it’s on the inside of the dome in the actual church (where we got a couple cool pictures of the rest of the church). However, this was the scariest part, because you could see right below you, and realize that there is at least a hundred foot drop until the floor. However, we soon entered into more staircases that actually went between the inner and outer domes. We finally made it to the top of that and out into fresh air, with an amazing and frightening view of Florence. After a couple of minutes, we went back inside, and had to descend all the stairs we had climbed up.
After exiting the Duomo, I noticed a group of people with some large video cameras. After a couple seconds, I realized it was the fine folks of Jersey Shore! YAY! oh, wait, I wasn’t that excited. Anyways, we quickly made our way to the other side of the Duomo where we found a delicious gelato place to congratulate our efforts for making it to the top of the Duomo.
After a short rest at our hostel, where we had new roommates, we went to see the David. The museum was pretty cool, and Michelangelo is a beast, but one of the best things there was a room absolutely full of plaster casts of famous statues throughout the city and Europe. It was incredible. The little video they had about the process of making the casts was also really neat. But by this time, we were exhausted, and headed back to our hostel for some sleep in preparation for our next day of travel.
Friday morning, we packed up and headed out to Pisa. We weren’t planning to stay a night in Pisa, because all we wanted to do was go to the Leaning Tower. When we got in to Pisa, we immediately bought reservation tickets for a train at 5pm. However, we soon discovered that there was absolutely nothing to do in Pisa besides go to the Leaning Tower. Once we got to the tower, we found a spot in the shade by a fountain and sat people-watching for several hours (tourists are quite possibly the most ridiculous people ever). We got tired of this, and we were getting hungry, so we started walking back towards the train station for some lunch and gelato. After about another hour and a half, we were finally about to go to Genoa.
Genoa is an amazing city. And the train there gives you plenty of picturesque views of the coast and the mountains (which are quite close to the train on either side). But back to Genoa.
Genova, if you so desire.
Genoa is a pretty big city, with a large population that actually lives there. There weren’t a lot of tourists, but the ones that are there are from other parts of Italy, so they’re not like most obnoxious American tourists. They don’t get frustrated at the locals, they don’t congregate in large groups at intersections or in tour groups, and they don’t slow down lines. Therefore, we were the most challenging people in Genoa, which meant that it was going to be a good couple of days.
At the suggestion of the B&B owner (the nicest lady ever), we went to an international fair that was being held at the docks. The fair was really cool, had lots of good food and smells (from what we didn’t have room to buy and eat), and tons of handmade goods. While we looked at a lot of them, I didn’t buy any (way overpriced and I wasn’t sure if it was acceptable to haggle) and GF bought one thing. As we were leaving, we saw a guy spinning clay and making little pots. He must have spotted us out of the corner of his eye out of the group of people watching him. He made a little bowl thing and wrote our names in Arabic in it after calling us up to his table. It was really nice. After giving him a “donation”, we headed back to our hotel.
The next day, we went to the big square in Genoa, passing some cool churches and houses on the way. After spending some time at the square, we headed to the aquarium (the largest in Europe, according to our B&B owner). The first activity actually in the aquarium was a 3d movie about some turtles, so we decided to watch this. However, as soon as the movie started, we realized we wouldn’t be able to understand any of the dialogue, because it was in Italian, and there were no subtitles. The movie seemed pretty good, but GF and I were laughing the whole time because it sounded like this little, animated turtle was trying to seduce us with his deep, suave-sounding Italian. After the movie finished, we went through the rest of the aquarium seeing most of the usual animals at a place like this. However, they also had a little hummingbird room where you could actually see hummingbirds flying around and such. While at first it seemed like a disappointment (it cost an extra 2 euros per person), we finally got to see a couple hummingbirds fly around. One of them flew to a feeder that was a couple inches in front of us and it just hovered there for about ten seconds. It was amazing.
After that, we finished the rest of the aquarium, which was a great place. We wanted to go on the pirate ship that was pretty close-by, but we needed a rest. This rest turned into a several hour-long napfest. We rushed to the pirate ship to tour it, but it had closed about a half hour early. We then decided to check out another place (the royal gardens of genoa) only to find that they, too, had closed a minute before we got there. We decided to pick our spirits up by having gelato.
After gelato, we walked around Genoa some more and had some more gelato (it was really hot that day, ok?) before heading back to sleep before returning to the castle the next day.
Overall, it was an amazing weekend, and I would really like to return to Genoa. It was beautiful there and we didn’t get to see everything that was there. Tour groups are absolutely horrible and I never want to see one ever again.
This upcoming weekend is Venice (starting tomorrow) and Verona. I’m pretty excited. More updates after the weekend!
Week One
So, this is the completion of my first week at the castle (Schloss Brunnenburg) here in lovely Dorf Tirol, Italy. (Previous statement is completely, 100% sarcastic-free). I’ve really settled in, and pretty much know the layout of the part of town that is closest to us. There are some really good restaurants here, and the food in general is really good. One of the people who owns the castle (Ezra Pound’s granddaughter-in-law) cooks for us twice a day, four times a week. She is vegetarian, but knows how to cook really good meat. The castle is a very green/eco-friendly place, and a lot of our food comes from here (fresh cherries are the best thing ever).
The castle has a lot of animals: pigs, goats, huge rabbits, more goats, a dog, some ducks, and some geese. One of the geese is a male, and is the scariest thing I have ever seen (sort of). Its neck is as thick as my arm. If you pass within twenty feet of its habitat, it puffs up, sticks its beak up, and does this ridiculous sounding call to try and scare you (which really works).
The castle is also a museum for Ezra Pound and has some castle-related museum stuff as well, so people come through all the time. Since this region of Italy has so many German tourists (SO MANY), the first language is often German, followed by Italian. It’s funny going around town, because most people expect us to speak German, and when we don’t, well, sometimes we get different pizza toppings than we expected. But really, a lot of people understand certain English words, and we’re slowly learning some German ones. But contextual clues and gestures are quite helpful as well.
The class is interesting. I’ve learned more about high-society Venice during the ’90s than I really expected to, but it has been helpful. We’ve already finished one of our books, and we’re finishing another one in a couple of days. The class is pretty enjoyable, and Dr. Redman is a pretty funny professor.
I got to have tea on Tuesday with Mary de Rachewiltz, Ezra Pound’s daughter and the wife of Prince Boris de Rachewiltz. Therefore, she is a princess. But that’s not important. She is in her 80s, but still very much with it, and is continuing to study her father’s works, specifically his cantos.
Friday was market day in Merano. Most of the things seemed overpriced (like a lot of things here), but it was still fun to walk around. And they had some delicious donuts. MMM… We also bought a ton of food (with Ben buying 2 kilos of some kind of cheese). But we’re almost done with that now.
Yesterday, I went to Bolzano with Monica and Grace to see Otzi, the iceman who was found in the mountains about 50 miles from here. Bolzano was a pretty cool little town, and the train was a newer train, so it was pretty nice. Also, the kebab place we went to was good, so it was a good day.
Tonight, there will be a celebration of Pentecost, where locals light fires across the mountains. So we’ll be going to the roof of the castle and watching them from our vantage point.
Well I’m off to go look at some more animals!
The First Day at the Castle
This is was the view from the bus as we chugged along the switchback road.
I’m living in the castle on the lower left!
There were piggies at the castle!
Boyfriend is the pig whisperer.
Yay! On our way to get gelato.
The sunset was beautiful.
Pictures!
Italy is Awesome
Pretty self-explanatory. The country is gorgeous. The people are mostly nice (except the people who try to get you to buy umbrellas all the time). And the food is amazing. And the castle is amazing.
Oh yeah, I mentioned that, right? The course I’m taking is at a castle where we are living as well. It’s owned by Ezra Pound’s daughter, and part of the castle is dedicated to an Ezra Pound museum, so there are a lot of German visitors around. But it’s ok, because they don’t general come into the rooms that say “Privat” on them. And we also get the run of the grounds after about 5.
The castle is on the side of a smallish mountain. These mountains/really-tall-hills are the pre-Alps. There’s a lot of houses packed onto the sides of these mountains. A lot of them grow grapes for wine or apples for cider. It’s really pretty awesome.
The views are absolutely beautiful. It’s really clean and natural here.
Pictures will be coming shortly when I get batteries and when people put up their pictures.
