for the past month and some weeks
Well I am finally back from a month and 15 days of traveling around Europe and honestly I am pretty beat and right now Beatle is insisting upon some attention. Alright so to make up for my long absence here is a description of my travels and I am going to try not to get into too much depth as there is a lot to say and I will never have enough time to explain everything.
I was given a marvelous gift from god to have my mom come and visit me in December. We met at the airport and let me just say that it was wonderful to see her and the first thing we did was hug. Then with tears in our eyes we sat at the airport describing hardships through the months and stories about what had been happening. We never left each other’s side the next week and a half traveling around to Salamanca, Valladolid, a small town outside of Burgos, around Bilbao, San Sebastian, then crossed into Pau and Lourdes for Christmas and back into Zaragoza for a cold night (I thought the hotels and hostels were too expensiver) and to Madrid to wait for the rest of my family.
Mom is working on describing everything that we saw during our time in each town but all together I think those weeks were a blast because it was new for both of us and most importantly we were together exploring. I loved it!
Some of the highlights were the random castles we encountered while driving through little towns, the one way traffic that while it was stressful it also got us a few good stories like being escorted out of town by some cops, the erotic church in a small conventional catholic town and the neat keys the woman used to open it, the beautifully exquisite cathedrals, watching a Eragon in English with subtitles, the beautiful castle in Pau and the nice tour guide, the amazing cathedral in Lourdes, the beautiful songs sang by nuns in the convent Christmas eve, the “hot tub” for Christmas eve, writing a letter to dad with a French keyboard, discovering the castle in Lourdes that has breathtaking views and so much to wander around and discover, the beautiful castle in San Sebastian that every time we went to see had something go wrong like a need for a bathroom when we got to the top, and the other was our search for the cemetery in the dark (mom was scared), then discovering the wonderful Telmo museum that we would have spent more time in had the cold not been seeping into our bodies, the shopping in France that we could never understand how much anything cost and exactly how to order, the bread was fabulous and the cheese strong “what a stinky story that was” and they don’t give bags for free, the crazy one way roads in all of France, the history behind Good King Henry and his tortoise shell, finding the frog on the door of the Salamanca University “let down” and even the beautiful sights the pilgrims encounter in burgos on their destination to Santiago, and a HUGE menu del dia in a small town outside of Bilbao, and our pizza and crepe chrismas, and finding a metro stop out in the middle of a Madrid suburb “finding a needle in a haysack phrase fits this nicely”. That is a long sentence but there was just so much to say and I guess I really couldn’t fit it all into one sentence like I had hoped. I am amazed at how much we actually did see and how much we walked and just discovered about most of these towns. What an adventure and who knew we had so much more to discover with the family.
We got back to Madrid and picked up Dad, Adar, Kayli, Isaiah and Tyler at the airport a few days after Christmas. Poor things they were jet lagged and ready to relax. We walked them around Madrid showing them the city square, the massive amount of people in the streets at night, some lladro mom liked, the big park of the retirement (we think) with hidden fountains and statues surrounded by trees, green grass, and benches, grassy slopes, and pathways with runners, families, and couples. Then to the train station, a quick kebab and back to the hostel for a game of phase ten that never happened.
Through the weeks with everybody we went to the beach, went to Marbella (and Adar’s beautiful man), made wonderful dinners, played phase 10, made sand castles, met vendors with wonderful exotic dips, went on wild chases to find hotels, and bus stations (or maybe I should say lost bus riders), went to a British bar to celebrate new years “come on beautiful women like you can’t be sitting.. go on men get your women!” saw the Madrid Royal palace, went on excursions to find absynth, made a day trip to Sevilla for me to show off the cathedral places that I go to school calle betis (which was dead for the first time ever since I have been here) the triana bridge, the walk beside the river, the bullring, and of course churros before a long ride back to the hotel. The trip with them was a lot shorter then I would have liked and I miss them terribly.
What saved me from crying too much was the rest of the trip with mom, dad, Isaiah and I. I feel really bad the girls and Tyler didn’t stay for this part because it pretty fun and jammed with more activities then relaxing time! We went to Malaga and saw the huge fort, the alcazar, and the three kings parade all in one day (an amazing day and I wish we would have had more time for this town), then to Estepona for a stay in an AMAZING Marriot, where we had wonderful meals, hot tubbing every night, movies, pictionary, walks on the beach, exploring of Ronda an its romantic views, beautiful park, old bull ring (mom really loved it which made everyone love it- well dad’s enthusiasm was a little low) and a trip to the wharf to see the fishing boats, flea market, and an Indian meal (where dad learned about how to ask for the bill), and games of human size chess, licorice shots, cappuccino machine and dryer problems, and of course the wonderful robes and our day travels to two other countries Morocco and Gibraltar!
Morocco was fun with the ferry into the “real Morocco” where money exchanges a lot fo hands. With good guides we went on tours of the city, to planned stops for camel rides (a cute picture of Isaiah and I holding hands) then a walk through of the marketplace (not as overwhelming as the Medina but good), a great lunch (dad was worried the whole time he would get sick), walks with mom pointing at foods being sold on the street she wanted to buy (they were covered in bugs and definitely not safe for our weak bowels) then the fun stops at a carpet shop (that is mom’s story) and a pharmacy and then a real encounter with the sellers on our way back to the bus. (I think Isaiah liked this part a whole bunch as I liked talking and playing around with the sellers and he had to keep dragging me along laughing at the jokes I kept making that these poor sellers didn’t understand!) That last part scared some people and I think can really be overwhelming for people who have never endured rigorous selling before.
To end the wonderful trip together we drove to Sevilla had a nice hour long snack of fruit and talk with my host family and then with tear covered eyes I watched them leave for the home. But I didn’t have a lot of time to miss them because I had the Italy trip to worry about, and boy did I worry about that!!
I had nightmares that something was going to go wrong with this trip as my Barcelona return was a disaster and I this was going to be my next trip without my family and a cheap airflight. I got little sleep and prayed that god would be with us and make the trip a success and god granted me some miracles the first being Cari Anne.
BACKPACKING ITALY
Cari Anne and I set off for our 10 day adventure ready with our backpacks stuffed at 4am. Let me just say that I had a lot of worries and Cari Anne was just plain excited and thank gosh her excitement wore off on me! We made it to Italy no problem and we never missed a train, a bus, a flight, or a hostel time! The trip was amazing!!! We fulfilled all of our goals and had a trip young girls dream of having. We went to Milan and our first stop was pizza at a crowded cafeteria. It was crowded with young business men and women on siesta/lunch break- they did not appreciate our backpacks but smiled warmly. Then down to the duomo (with the help of some construction workers that gave bad directions) and on the side of the duomo was a crowd of girls with posters hoping to see some famous man (English guy because their signs were in English attempts), and then we got away from that crowd to get directions from an eager set of Italian men asking if they could help us (even though we were confidently walking by, they just wanted to chat) and down an outside street display of beautiful pictures of different parts of Italy that were just breathtaking. Then we made it to the castle (not as cool as I had hoped but I have seen a lot of castles now and it is hard to measure up to Lourdes). Then a walk back through the “stylish shops” to the bus station (not without some boys hanging out of the car windows to just stare at us) to catch our late train to Florence.
Florence in itself was an amazing city but its claim to fame is its rich art museums. The Uffizi was HUGE and spectacular with so many pieces of art that I can only name the really famous pieces and that would be Raphael, Da Vinci’s Adoration of the Magi (unfinished) and Annunciation and a piece he did with another artist of Jesus’ baptism, Boticelli’s two Birth of Venus, Spring, and Adoration of the Magi. From Michealangelo’s Holy Family with John the Baptist which the story behind it I liked more then the piece itself honestly. (just in case you don’t know the piece was made because a rich man commissioned Michealangelo to paint it and didn’t like how Mary was portrayed as fit with tone arms, and Jesus is in Joseph’s arms and is trying to climb onto Mary’s shoulder, two things never painted in family’s portrait before. The man who commissioned Michealangelo was furious and ridiculed him for it. Later he changed his mind and like the painting and had to pay twice as much for it, to make up for Michealangelo’s hurt pride. From that day on it hung in this rich man’s house above his bed until the man died.) Then Raphael’s self portrait, Madonna of the gold finch (which was in a private house and a landslide occurred and it was hidden under the house for a long time until it was discovered, recognized and restored).
While this part of the Uffizi was pretty neat and a life experience in itself I found another part of the museum neat and while both Cari Ann and I were on overload and these were the last pieces we visited. They consisted of pieces discovered over the centuries by people who recognized the pieces and restored to their natural place at the Uffizi. They were found in storage facilities, antique markets, and among belongings people didn’t understand their true value. I loved them.
The exhibit first catches your eye with a gruesome picture of a man being held down by two women and one is viciously slicing his head off. It was a about a story we didn’t know so we moved to the next picture and wouldn’t you know it had a man leaning over a boy he has pinned down with a knife in his hand. An angel is holding the man’s hand with the knife away from the young boy and the angel’s other hand is pointing to a ram standing on the far right side of the picture watching the scene. Can you guess what it is??? Well we didn’t either it a representation of Abraham with his son Isaac and the angel is telling him god is pleased and that he should not kill his son and instead kill the ram. A really powerful piece by Caravaggio.
The next piece that caught my eye was of Salome with the head of John the Baptist on a platter by Battisello. I really need to read more about that story. The next piece I liked was of a man poor man dressed in rags and old drinking from woman’s breast as she looks in the other direction as if making sure no one comes by and catches this scene. It is called Roman Unity and I thought it really made a good statement a piece I really liked the artist was Bartolomeo Manfredi. It was found at an English antique market and a man recognized it, bought it and donated it to the Uffizi.
The last artist I liked in the exhibition was Gnerardo delle Notto. His pieces were very dark of figures immersed in darkness exept for one source of light, usually a candle. For this reason his pieces are called candlight. The first was of a baby laying on a blanket on a manger of hay, where the mom has just uncovered it and two other children stand around staring at the baby with faces that show they are mesmorized by the child. I thought it was heart touching. The light source was the baby itself and the impression I got from it was that it was a family scene and didn’t relate specifically to Jesus himself. The other pictures were of groups of men, some of groups of women where they are all around a candle all are poor usually and in the dark places just outside the main scene there were glimpses of angels and starry nights and other things not quite obvious to the viewer.
We left the Uffizi pretty overwhelmed then had our first real aggressive hit ons. The first was from a man that was in a crowd of vendors trying to sell pictures of the famous sites and statues. Well when the police came up they picked up their pictures in just a sweep of the hand and disbanded. Two, of course younger men, started trying to talk to us in particular asking.. no I would say more yelling across the courtyard “where are you from” we smiled and kept walking away but me.. who stopped in front of Cari Anne and while she talked to me I faced her and saw the boys over her shoulder. They came up behind her trying to look shalaunt and asked if we liked their pictures I said not really and then I started walking away and Cari Anne saw the guy staring at me walk away clinch and unclench his hands in grabbing motions and mutter under his breath “I like watching you walk away a little too much”. She was freaked out and we caught up to me and we got away from them. Well that lasted until we got done with an expensive meal that wasn’t very good and very little lasagna and spaghetti (one of our first mistakes) and when we walked out oh lucky us guess who was coming around the block looking for people to sell their pictures to? Oh lucky us! We didn’t have a problem with them really just asked them show us how to get to a bridge (about a block away) then we parted paths (but not after the guy gave my butt a nice smack and walked away. It grossed me out and poor Cari Anne had to consol me for a couple minutes until both of us shrugged it off as a good story and walked around some more.
We made a trip to a museum just specifically to see Michealangelo’s David (big and impressive) I learned a whole lot about it – more then I probably needed to know. Grew and appreciation for it, especially the statue’s facial expression, size, and how the artist made the sling shot almost nonexistent and stance as if he is going to move. We listened to a tour guide that was really good! He really loved the piece and that got passed on to all listening.
Later we met another man who was sitting on the steps between the duomo and the bapistry (and was really cute) we sat near him as we looked at our map then when we left I gave him a cute smile and we walked toward a gelato shop for a small two euro snack and there he was. He followed us a bit then approached and said hi and in our Spanish and his Italian we met our first really nice and helpful Italian boy. He wasn’t originally from Florence but Albania (neither of us knew where that was but he told us it was on the side of Greece- that I still need to look up.) He asked if he could accompany us to Michealangelo’s park which was a lot like the castle in San Sebastian and it was dark on the way up but the sight was breathtaking and we got pictures of it and one shot of the guy we were with.
We walked back into the heart of Florence and with the guy’s help we got the train station and went to buy tickets for our next train ride to Rome. We ended up breaking off from our new found friend- that was actually really helpful and a gentleman with promises of meeting later to go dancing and went shopping in the shops then back to hostel to play around on internet and ended up being around 40 minutes late meeting him and we never saw him again. I am sure he waited for us and we really screwed up by being so late in meeting him. We stood him up.. without really meaning to, poor guy. We did wait for about a half hour for him hoping he may come back and ended up having two young guys approach us and their first words were “do you want to sleep with us” needless to say they tried to fix that mistake but we got away pretty fast.
We left the hostel that next morning and got to our train on time to go to Rome! We got to Rome and with the help of the free buses made it to our hostel Bella Roma and then went to explore the city. That first night we saw the Piazza del Popolo with its big statues, surrounded by more statues and grand view from up the stairs and then along the mountainside to Plaza de Espagna where tons of people sat waiting for someone, girls getting hit on by Italian boys, a fountain in the shape of a canoe below. It looked pretty neat. We wandered some more (trying to follow the map) and went through a museum and when we looked out one of the windows we saw a multitude of people facing us looking at what we couldn’t see but below us was a pool of water but it wasn’t until we got out of the museum to the front of the fountain that we understood what was so neat. It was the Trevi fountain (that's not it in Italian, I did a rough translation) . It was beautiful with lights accentuating the waterfall with Neptune riding a shell chariot from the acqua vergin aqueduct by two winged horses being led by titans on either side. It is a very famous, touristy, romantic place. We got a lot of pictures but it was hard with so many people, and the vendors, and the lights on the fountain made it difficult.
Our next stop was a pizzeria (we just came across it as we wandered around) that was amazing!! It was 1 euro for a slice and we are talking slices that are folded in half to eat. With a variety of sausage, mushrooms, cheeses (blue), anchovies (yuck), ham and even a potato. We just picked something the fun and good looking guy cut it and joked with everyone (and this was a local favorite we noticed) and then put it in the oven and served it to you cut into two parts and wrapped in a paper towel. If he cut it too big and it weighed over a euro he would give a discount (well at least he did for two college girls).
We took our pizza down the street to the pantheon. (it was only about 2 km away). Now this place was AMAZING. It was free (which isn’t normal in Europe) and we walked in and just starred at its high circular ceiling. An elderly man was set out to help us learn about the pantheon because he couldn't believe we were there without one of the expensive tour books they had on sale inside. So he proceeded to tell us (which was actually really nice of him) about the two kings buried there where the only kings Italy has ever had the first and the second, so we got pictures of their tombs. there was another tomb but I can't remember who it was right now...I'll get that later. In addition he made it known that this famous site serves two purposes today a historical site and is still a church and neither bothers the other-pretty important.
We lef the pantheon bought some gelato and sat on the Spanish steps for a bit taking in the actions of the people around us. We actually had some boys come up and sit behind us and try to talk to us by yelling “Aleman” “ Frances”. We ignored them since they were so young, but started laughing when their next plan of attack was to take out their cell phone and play a love song in english (we were serranaded by a cell phone!) so that was interesting. That was pretty much our night so we went on our long hour long treck back to the hostel.
SECOND DAY IN ROME
I was given a marvelous gift from god to have my mom come and visit me in December. We met at the airport and let me just say that it was wonderful to see her and the first thing we did was hug. Then with tears in our eyes we sat at the airport describing hardships through the months and stories about what had been happening. We never left each other’s side the next week and a half traveling around to Salamanca, Valladolid, a small town outside of Burgos, around Bilbao, San Sebastian, then crossed into Pau and Lourdes for Christmas and back into Zaragoza for a cold night (I thought the hotels and hostels were too expensiver) and to Madrid to wait for the rest of my family.
Mom is working on describing everything that we saw during our time in each town but all together I think those weeks were a blast because it was new for both of us and most importantly we were together exploring. I loved it!
Some of the highlights were the random castles we encountered while driving through little towns, the one way traffic that while it was stressful it also got us a few good stories like being escorted out of town by some cops, the erotic church in a small conventional catholic town and the neat keys the woman used to open it, the beautifully exquisite cathedrals, watching a Eragon in English with subtitles, the beautiful castle in Pau and the nice tour guide, the amazing cathedral in Lourdes, the beautiful songs sang by nuns in the convent Christmas eve, the “hot tub” for Christmas eve, writing a letter to dad with a French keyboard, discovering the castle in Lourdes that has breathtaking views and so much to wander around and discover, the beautiful castle in San Sebastian that every time we went to see had something go wrong like a need for a bathroom when we got to the top, and the other was our search for the cemetery in the dark (mom was scared), then discovering the wonderful Telmo museum that we would have spent more time in had the cold not been seeping into our bodies, the shopping in France that we could never understand how much anything cost and exactly how to order, the bread was fabulous and the cheese strong “what a stinky story that was” and they don’t give bags for free, the crazy one way roads in all of France, the history behind Good King Henry and his tortoise shell, finding the frog on the door of the Salamanca University “let down” and even the beautiful sights the pilgrims encounter in burgos on their destination to Santiago, and a HUGE menu del dia in a small town outside of Bilbao, and our pizza and crepe chrismas, and finding a metro stop out in the middle of a Madrid suburb “finding a needle in a haysack phrase fits this nicely”. That is a long sentence but there was just so much to say and I guess I really couldn’t fit it all into one sentence like I had hoped. I am amazed at how much we actually did see and how much we walked and just discovered about most of these towns. What an adventure and who knew we had so much more to discover with the family.
We got back to Madrid and picked up Dad, Adar, Kayli, Isaiah and Tyler at the airport a few days after Christmas. Poor things they were jet lagged and ready to relax. We walked them around Madrid showing them the city square, the massive amount of people in the streets at night, some lladro mom liked, the big park of the retirement (we think) with hidden fountains and statues surrounded by trees, green grass, and benches, grassy slopes, and pathways with runners, families, and couples. Then to the train station, a quick kebab and back to the hostel for a game of phase ten that never happened.
Through the weeks with everybody we went to the beach, went to Marbella (and Adar’s beautiful man), made wonderful dinners, played phase 10, made sand castles, met vendors with wonderful exotic dips, went on wild chases to find hotels, and bus stations (or maybe I should say lost bus riders), went to a British bar to celebrate new years “come on beautiful women like you can’t be sitting.. go on men get your women!” saw the Madrid Royal palace, went on excursions to find absynth, made a day trip to Sevilla for me to show off the cathedral places that I go to school calle betis (which was dead for the first time ever since I have been here) the triana bridge, the walk beside the river, the bullring, and of course churros before a long ride back to the hotel. The trip with them was a lot shorter then I would have liked and I miss them terribly.
What saved me from crying too much was the rest of the trip with mom, dad, Isaiah and I. I feel really bad the girls and Tyler didn’t stay for this part because it pretty fun and jammed with more activities then relaxing time! We went to Malaga and saw the huge fort, the alcazar, and the three kings parade all in one day (an amazing day and I wish we would have had more time for this town), then to Estepona for a stay in an AMAZING Marriot, where we had wonderful meals, hot tubbing every night, movies, pictionary, walks on the beach, exploring of Ronda an its romantic views, beautiful park, old bull ring (mom really loved it which made everyone love it- well dad’s enthusiasm was a little low) and a trip to the wharf to see the fishing boats, flea market, and an Indian meal (where dad learned about how to ask for the bill), and games of human size chess, licorice shots, cappuccino machine and dryer problems, and of course the wonderful robes and our day travels to two other countries Morocco and Gibraltar!
Morocco was fun with the ferry into the “real Morocco” where money exchanges a lot fo hands. With good guides we went on tours of the city, to planned stops for camel rides (a cute picture of Isaiah and I holding hands) then a walk through of the marketplace (not as overwhelming as the Medina but good), a great lunch (dad was worried the whole time he would get sick), walks with mom pointing at foods being sold on the street she wanted to buy (they were covered in bugs and definitely not safe for our weak bowels) then the fun stops at a carpet shop (that is mom’s story) and a pharmacy and then a real encounter with the sellers on our way back to the bus. (I think Isaiah liked this part a whole bunch as I liked talking and playing around with the sellers and he had to keep dragging me along laughing at the jokes I kept making that these poor sellers didn’t understand!) That last part scared some people and I think can really be overwhelming for people who have never endured rigorous selling before.
To end the wonderful trip together we drove to Sevilla had a nice hour long snack of fruit and talk with my host family and then with tear covered eyes I watched them leave for the home. But I didn’t have a lot of time to miss them because I had the Italy trip to worry about, and boy did I worry about that!!
I had nightmares that something was going to go wrong with this trip as my Barcelona return was a disaster and I this was going to be my next trip without my family and a cheap airflight. I got little sleep and prayed that god would be with us and make the trip a success and god granted me some miracles the first being Cari Anne.
BACKPACKING ITALY
Cari Anne and I set off for our 10 day adventure ready with our backpacks stuffed at 4am. Let me just say that I had a lot of worries and Cari Anne was just plain excited and thank gosh her excitement wore off on me! We made it to Italy no problem and we never missed a train, a bus, a flight, or a hostel time! The trip was amazing!!! We fulfilled all of our goals and had a trip young girls dream of having. We went to Milan and our first stop was pizza at a crowded cafeteria. It was crowded with young business men and women on siesta/lunch break- they did not appreciate our backpacks but smiled warmly. Then down to the duomo (with the help of some construction workers that gave bad directions) and on the side of the duomo was a crowd of girls with posters hoping to see some famous man (English guy because their signs were in English attempts), and then we got away from that crowd to get directions from an eager set of Italian men asking if they could help us (even though we were confidently walking by, they just wanted to chat) and down an outside street display of beautiful pictures of different parts of Italy that were just breathtaking. Then we made it to the castle (not as cool as I had hoped but I have seen a lot of castles now and it is hard to measure up to Lourdes). Then a walk back through the “stylish shops” to the bus station (not without some boys hanging out of the car windows to just stare at us) to catch our late train to Florence.
Florence in itself was an amazing city but its claim to fame is its rich art museums. The Uffizi was HUGE and spectacular with so many pieces of art that I can only name the really famous pieces and that would be Raphael, Da Vinci’s Adoration of the Magi (unfinished) and Annunciation and a piece he did with another artist of Jesus’ baptism, Boticelli’s two Birth of Venus, Spring, and Adoration of the Magi. From Michealangelo’s Holy Family with John the Baptist which the story behind it I liked more then the piece itself honestly. (just in case you don’t know the piece was made because a rich man commissioned Michealangelo to paint it and didn’t like how Mary was portrayed as fit with tone arms, and Jesus is in Joseph’s arms and is trying to climb onto Mary’s shoulder, two things never painted in family’s portrait before. The man who commissioned Michealangelo was furious and ridiculed him for it. Later he changed his mind and like the painting and had to pay twice as much for it, to make up for Michealangelo’s hurt pride. From that day on it hung in this rich man’s house above his bed until the man died.) Then Raphael’s self portrait, Madonna of the gold finch (which was in a private house and a landslide occurred and it was hidden under the house for a long time until it was discovered, recognized and restored).
While this part of the Uffizi was pretty neat and a life experience in itself I found another part of the museum neat and while both Cari Ann and I were on overload and these were the last pieces we visited. They consisted of pieces discovered over the centuries by people who recognized the pieces and restored to their natural place at the Uffizi. They were found in storage facilities, antique markets, and among belongings people didn’t understand their true value. I loved them.
The exhibit first catches your eye with a gruesome picture of a man being held down by two women and one is viciously slicing his head off. It was a about a story we didn’t know so we moved to the next picture and wouldn’t you know it had a man leaning over a boy he has pinned down with a knife in his hand. An angel is holding the man’s hand with the knife away from the young boy and the angel’s other hand is pointing to a ram standing on the far right side of the picture watching the scene. Can you guess what it is??? Well we didn’t either it a representation of Abraham with his son Isaac and the angel is telling him god is pleased and that he should not kill his son and instead kill the ram. A really powerful piece by Caravaggio.
The next piece that caught my eye was of Salome with the head of John the Baptist on a platter by Battisello. I really need to read more about that story. The next piece I liked was of a man poor man dressed in rags and old drinking from woman’s breast as she looks in the other direction as if making sure no one comes by and catches this scene. It is called Roman Unity and I thought it really made a good statement a piece I really liked the artist was Bartolomeo Manfredi. It was found at an English antique market and a man recognized it, bought it and donated it to the Uffizi.
The last artist I liked in the exhibition was Gnerardo delle Notto. His pieces were very dark of figures immersed in darkness exept for one source of light, usually a candle. For this reason his pieces are called candlight. The first was of a baby laying on a blanket on a manger of hay, where the mom has just uncovered it and two other children stand around staring at the baby with faces that show they are mesmorized by the child. I thought it was heart touching. The light source was the baby itself and the impression I got from it was that it was a family scene and didn’t relate specifically to Jesus himself. The other pictures were of groups of men, some of groups of women where they are all around a candle all are poor usually and in the dark places just outside the main scene there were glimpses of angels and starry nights and other things not quite obvious to the viewer.
We left the Uffizi pretty overwhelmed then had our first real aggressive hit ons. The first was from a man that was in a crowd of vendors trying to sell pictures of the famous sites and statues. Well when the police came up they picked up their pictures in just a sweep of the hand and disbanded. Two, of course younger men, started trying to talk to us in particular asking.. no I would say more yelling across the courtyard “where are you from” we smiled and kept walking away but me.. who stopped in front of Cari Anne and while she talked to me I faced her and saw the boys over her shoulder. They came up behind her trying to look shalaunt and asked if we liked their pictures I said not really and then I started walking away and Cari Anne saw the guy staring at me walk away clinch and unclench his hands in grabbing motions and mutter under his breath “I like watching you walk away a little too much”. She was freaked out and we caught up to me and we got away from them. Well that lasted until we got done with an expensive meal that wasn’t very good and very little lasagna and spaghetti (one of our first mistakes) and when we walked out oh lucky us guess who was coming around the block looking for people to sell their pictures to? Oh lucky us! We didn’t have a problem with them really just asked them show us how to get to a bridge (about a block away) then we parted paths (but not after the guy gave my butt a nice smack and walked away. It grossed me out and poor Cari Anne had to consol me for a couple minutes until both of us shrugged it off as a good story and walked around some more.
We made a trip to a museum just specifically to see Michealangelo’s David (big and impressive) I learned a whole lot about it – more then I probably needed to know. Grew and appreciation for it, especially the statue’s facial expression, size, and how the artist made the sling shot almost nonexistent and stance as if he is going to move. We listened to a tour guide that was really good! He really loved the piece and that got passed on to all listening.
Later we met another man who was sitting on the steps between the duomo and the bapistry (and was really cute) we sat near him as we looked at our map then when we left I gave him a cute smile and we walked toward a gelato shop for a small two euro snack and there he was. He followed us a bit then approached and said hi and in our Spanish and his Italian we met our first really nice and helpful Italian boy. He wasn’t originally from Florence but Albania (neither of us knew where that was but he told us it was on the side of Greece- that I still need to look up.) He asked if he could accompany us to Michealangelo’s park which was a lot like the castle in San Sebastian and it was dark on the way up but the sight was breathtaking and we got pictures of it and one shot of the guy we were with.
We walked back into the heart of Florence and with the guy’s help we got the train station and went to buy tickets for our next train ride to Rome. We ended up breaking off from our new found friend- that was actually really helpful and a gentleman with promises of meeting later to go dancing and went shopping in the shops then back to hostel to play around on internet and ended up being around 40 minutes late meeting him and we never saw him again. I am sure he waited for us and we really screwed up by being so late in meeting him. We stood him up.. without really meaning to, poor guy. We did wait for about a half hour for him hoping he may come back and ended up having two young guys approach us and their first words were “do you want to sleep with us” needless to say they tried to fix that mistake but we got away pretty fast.
We left the hostel that next morning and got to our train on time to go to Rome! We got to Rome and with the help of the free buses made it to our hostel Bella Roma and then went to explore the city. That first night we saw the Piazza del Popolo with its big statues, surrounded by more statues and grand view from up the stairs and then along the mountainside to Plaza de Espagna where tons of people sat waiting for someone, girls getting hit on by Italian boys, a fountain in the shape of a canoe below. It looked pretty neat. We wandered some more (trying to follow the map) and went through a museum and when we looked out one of the windows we saw a multitude of people facing us looking at what we couldn’t see but below us was a pool of water but it wasn’t until we got out of the museum to the front of the fountain that we understood what was so neat. It was the Trevi fountain (that's not it in Italian, I did a rough translation) . It was beautiful with lights accentuating the waterfall with Neptune riding a shell chariot from the acqua vergin aqueduct by two winged horses being led by titans on either side. It is a very famous, touristy, romantic place. We got a lot of pictures but it was hard with so many people, and the vendors, and the lights on the fountain made it difficult.
Our next stop was a pizzeria (we just came across it as we wandered around) that was amazing!! It was 1 euro for a slice and we are talking slices that are folded in half to eat. With a variety of sausage, mushrooms, cheeses (blue), anchovies (yuck), ham and even a potato. We just picked something the fun and good looking guy cut it and joked with everyone (and this was a local favorite we noticed) and then put it in the oven and served it to you cut into two parts and wrapped in a paper towel. If he cut it too big and it weighed over a euro he would give a discount (well at least he did for two college girls).
We took our pizza down the street to the pantheon. (it was only about 2 km away). Now this place was AMAZING. It was free (which isn’t normal in Europe) and we walked in and just starred at its high circular ceiling. An elderly man was set out to help us learn about the pantheon because he couldn't believe we were there without one of the expensive tour books they had on sale inside. So he proceeded to tell us (which was actually really nice of him) about the two kings buried there where the only kings Italy has ever had the first and the second, so we got pictures of their tombs. there was another tomb but I can't remember who it was right now...I'll get that later. In addition he made it known that this famous site serves two purposes today a historical site and is still a church and neither bothers the other-pretty important.
We lef the pantheon bought some gelato and sat on the Spanish steps for a bit taking in the actions of the people around us. We actually had some boys come up and sit behind us and try to talk to us by yelling “Aleman” “ Frances”. We ignored them since they were so young, but started laughing when their next plan of attack was to take out their cell phone and play a love song in english (we were serranaded by a cell phone!) so that was interesting. That was pretty much our night so we went on our long hour long treck back to the hostel.
SECOND DAY IN ROME
posted by Lauren Westling @ 2:59 AM
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