Italy!
3 roommates, 1 ex-roomate, 9 days, 9 cities, 20 hours on trains, thousands of stairs, countless streets - curvy, cobblestoned or portico-covered - surrounded by colorful buildings and tile roofs, liters of expresso and Lambrusco, a hundred shared moments of laughter.....
I saw and experienced so much it would take forever to write (not to mention read) so I'll just give some of the highlights and impressions...
Day 1: 4 am alarm. Plane to Milan. Bus to train station. It is big, cold, dirty. Expresso gives us new life. Free Fila chapstick from the luggage storage guy! Out in the city: damp, gray, dirty, urban, until we hit the old city - ritzy shopping, a covered walkway entered through colossal arches, and the Duomo. The Duomo roof is filled with scrollwork and spires, and made to walk on and explore. It starts to rain and women in high heels grip the railings tightly as we decide to descend. Down again, we meet up with Chase, Katie's roomate from last year who flew in from London to meet us. More coffee. Catch a train to Bologna.
I wake up from a nap to see sunny skies and sunshine and feel spring-time air. Bologna is fantastic. The Old City walls are still partially standing, portico-covered sidewalks line all the streets so you can traverse almost the entire old city without getting wet in the rain and are covered with tile floors. The buildings are warm colors - oranges, yellows, reds- with those red tile roofs. Open piazzas provide resting places, twisty side streets hold the promise of exploration. Cass and I check in to our B&B, an apartment with a really talkative woman... that we can't understand because we don't speak Italian - Katie gets us sorted out. We meet Jill, Katie's friend from when she studied in Bologna. We go out for drinks and some fabulous Italian food. We meet other ex-roomates and current roommates of ex-roomates... it's a giant roommate connection!!!
Cool thing: Apertivo. Go to a bar between 6 and 8. Buy a drink, get free appetizers - which can actually make a meal by themselves...
Day 2: Cass and I day trip to Venice! It's Carnival and crowded, with masks and costumes and face-painters. We criss-cross canals with a stream of people, following signs to find the Piazza San Marco, peaking at the Rialto bridge on our way. Small streets, bridges and shops, blue-green water, gondoliers, fascinating architecture. A silly string fight, confetti everywhere, a feeling of merriment. When we get to San Marco, it's so crowded we can't really get a sense of the place. We take a water bus back to where we started. I think half of Italy was on the train on the way back... it was so crowded we started out standing in the aisle! Back to town for dinner and the best gelato ever...
Day 3: Day trip to Florence! Chase studied there, so he showed us around town. Duomo first - a huge free-standing dome that you can climb to the top of for a fabulous view of the city. If you can make it up all the steps, it's so worth it! At one point in the climb up, the steps go between the two layers of the dome! there's also a walkway around the interior, close to the huge paintings that adorn the ceiling. the view is amazing, church bells ringing, sun shining, breeze blowing, I'm pensively thinking...
See the city, eat lunch and drink Lambrusco, a sparkling Italian wine. We continue our wandering, traversing much of the city and just taking it all in... including the church where Galileo is buried, with a leather shop in the back. We found a perch on a bridge as the sun started to sink....
Day 4: See Bologna. Two Towers, the church, great piazzas both big and small, protected from the rain by porticoes, of course. Cass and KT and I take the hike up the San Luca, a church on a hill way way way above the city. there is a LOT of steps... and steep sidewalks... and more stairs... but we make it. And though the view is obscured by fog, the church is beautiful and it feels like we're on top of the clouds... back down, coffee by the main piazza, watching people scurry through the rain.
Day 5: Train to Bologna! We barely make our connection, but arrive on time. We follow directions - to the "tree-filled piazza" and the "pink and gray building" to get the key for the apartment we rented. We explored the city on foot, of course: pizza on the steps of a church in a piazza, Olympic hustle and bustle, buildings that are more ornate and more muted colors than we've seen before, the river, the Cinema Museum... that night we meet a guy from Hudson, Wisconsin who works for Kodak at the Olympics. Random.
Day 6: OLYMPICS!! With matching America jersies, and Chase in an American flag cape, we head up to the mountains. We're a little disspaointed at the lack of excitement in the towns themselves, and get to the site quite early. In we go, hanging out watching people walk in to the grounds, talking to the people who are paid to stand there and yell at people coming in to get them excited. We meet a random backpacker from California who's been going for 5 months. We see our Kodak friend, Chip, from the night before, and he gives us passes to the hospitality tent! Free food and italian wine - and it's warm! we meet freiends of the American in the event, Speedy Peterson! We stay til the even starts... it is amazing! Watching guys spin and flip through the air on skis... it goes fast, though, and it was over too quickly. and Speedy didn't medal. Bummer. We take our frozen selves back to the tent, where the mood is slightly subdued. We turn down an invite to a ski team party. 8am train the next day. Which we make with plenty of time to spare on....
Day 7. Aix-en-Provence! Katie's other ex-roomate, who goes by Dap, plays American Football in Aix. We pile into his silver beater of a car and drive to town. Settle in, go for coffee, wandering the streets of the center... more curvy cobblestones, but this town is known for its fountains, and they're everywhere - in the middle of big squares and tucked into small corners or made part of restaurant displays.
Day 8: One of the most heavenly moments ever - sitting in the sun at a French cafe, coffee in hand, watching the locals stroll by... I could've sat there all day - but it was time for the...
French Road Trip! Accompanied by our boisterous singing, we drive to Avignon, where katie and chase dance on the bridge (it's in a song, this bridge!), we wander more streets, soak up some sunshine, admire churches, old buildings, parks and statues... as the sun is setting we head out to another town, famous for its wines, apparently, called Chateauneuf de Pape (9th house of the Pope, we think). We climb up to see the ruins of the pope's actual residence, lit up in the dark, and look over the dark and empty vineyards (not grape season). We can't find a lot of open restaurants, so we get back in the car and proceeed to Orange (pronounce with French accent! this is not orange like the color or fruit!). We have fabulous food and splurge on a bottle of good Chateauneuf wine... and it's so worth it!
Day 9. Time to go. We drive to Marseilles for our plane. Plan to see the town a bit, or perhaps go out to the island prison that is the one in the Count of MonteCristo, but get trapped in the longest lunch ever and only have time for a brief walk around the harbor. Our drive to the airport is heaven - windows open, beautiful scenery... I'd like to to back someday!
Whew. And that's the short version!! I'm sure I forgot a few things, but you get the drift! It was an amazing trip, and it was great to be there with people who knew the area - so we were less like tourists and more like visitors. We walked to many streets and so many things that were impossible to capture on film... I did take quite a few pictures, of course, and they're posted. Click the link at right, as usual!!
posted by wicky @ 2:28 PM
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