Ciao bella!

Day 1 : Rome part 1

First meal in Italy!

My first big trip this semester: Rome and Florence, Italy! We arrived pretty early in Rome after getting up way too early to make a 6:30am flight. When we finally got to Termini train station after taking a shuttle from the airport, we just started walking to get our bearings and stumbled upon Piazza della Republica and Santa Maria delgi Angelli, then passed the Fontana del Tritone on the way to the hotel! Since we only had the rest of Thursday and part of Friday in Rome, we decided to do a speedy tour of as many monuments we could fit in one day on Thursday. We hit about 17, if we counted right – try to tell me that’s not efficient tourism! The first one we visited was the Fontana di Trevi, where we all made wishes as is apparently custom for everyone to do. We had our first meal near there too, which did not disappoint! By far the most amazing pizza I’ve ever had in my life.

Piazza Navona - Neptune's Statue

The better half of the Pantheon

That afternoon we breezed our way through as many monuments and sights as our exhausted bodies would take us to, trekking all over the ancient city. We visited the Pantheon next, which was much less stunning from the outside than I imagined because half of it was being restored so we couldn’t get the full effect. The inside was beautiful with the rotunda and oculus opening to the sky! On our way to Piazza Navona, home of Bernini’s famous Four Fountains statue we explored a few gourmet shops and tried some real extra virgin olive oil and balsalmic vinegar! Too bad we couldn’t bring any back, because RyanAir only allows one carry on bag each. Not fair.

Amanda and Me at Bernini's Four Fountains Statue

Piazza Navona was definitely one of my favorites, where the ancient Romans went to watch the ‘games’ and was thus known as the ‘Circus Agonalis’, competition arena. It was amazingly beautiful with the Fountain of the four Rivers in the middle by Bernini, the church of Sant’Agnese in Agone by Borromini and Rainaldi, and two more fountains: the Fontana del Moro on the southern side with four Tritons, and at the northern side the Fountain of Neptune.

Victor Emmanuel's Monument

Next we hit the Monument to Vittorio Emanuelle II, which was built to honor Victor Emmanuel, the first king of unified Italy. It is MASSIVE, built of pure white marble and has huge stairways, numerous Corinthian columns, fountains, a huge statue of Victor Emmanuelle on horseback in the center, and two statues of the goddess Victoria riding on chariots. The structure itself is 135m wide and 70m high, 81m if you include the statues on top!  

the Colosseum

We then passed the Roman forum on the way to the Colosseum and Constantin’s Arch! One thing to check off the life to-do list. Extremely beautiful, just as I imagined. After basically being assaulted by these guys dressed up as gladiators who took pictures with us and then demanded we pay them, we decided to trudge back towards the center city – when we got our first gelato of the trip! Amazing. I got tiramisu flavor, how can you possibly beat that? Two amazing desserts in one! We finished our day off with a visit to the Spanish steps, a great dinner, and a little encounter with a little black market which we took advantage of big time!

Fountain di Trevi

Day 2: Rome part 2 à Florence

Got up early and started making our way across to the city to visit Vatican City. We passed a bunch more monuments on the way : first was the Palazzo Montecitorio, which is the current seat of the Italian Chamber of Deputies. Then we crossed the Ponte Umberto I for a quick glance at the Palazzo di Giustizia (Palace of Justice) and Castel Sant Angelo – the tomb of the Ancient Emperor Hadrian - and stopped on the Ponte Sant Angelo for a great view of the Fiume River and the Vatican!

Amanda and I on the way to the Vatican

The Vatican and Sistine Chapel: two more things to cross off the life to-do list! First we visited St. Peter’s Square and the Basilica, then headed over to get in the 1.5 hour line to get into the Vatican Museum, which leads to the Sistine Chapel. The Chapel itself has with many of Michaelangelo’s most famous paintings, which apparently took him 4 whole years to paint! After that we headed back to the hotel to check out and then to Termini Train Station to buy tickets and catch a train to Florence. We chose to take the fast train, which took 1.5 hrs and cost 44 euro instead of chosing the slower train for 4 hrs and 17 euros. Should’ve known it was too good to be true. Apparently there was a two minute difference in their departure times and we followed the signs to the only train we saw departing for Florence Santa Maria Novella station…which we realized too late after hearing how many stops the conductor was announcing that we were on the slow train. So we had a nice scenic ride to Florence and wasted 2.5 hours and 27 euros. Luckily that was the worst thing that happened the whole trip!

St. Peter's Square

After getting into Florence late and finally finding our hotel, we headed to another amazing meal for dinner. Tip for visiting Italy: the house wine is always great! At least from what we experienced. Also, the parmesan cheese that they serve with meals is so good you can practically eat it with a spoon. No joke. Dinner was also hilarious. There were these American southerners with hilarious thick accents, who were obviously a little tipsy because they were making ‘slightly’ ignorant comments and pleading with their waiter to teach them some Italian words, which they of course butchered awfully. One of the funnier things I remember was when one of the men was served his dessert; “There’s chocolate in the middle of my vanilla ice cream! It’s integrated!” Then his wife; “I could never live here because I can’t parallel park for my life!” Gotta love extremely intelligent Americans and how they represent our country soo well abroad.

Day 3 : Florence

On top of the Duomo

Ever since I took my first year seminar at Middlebury on Rome, Florence, and Venice, I’ve always wanted to visit the Duomo and the Ponte Vecchio. First thing in the morning we started heading across town towards the Duomo, but paused for a sec in Piazza della Republica where we got our first taste of Florence’s street vendors – beautiful scarves galore ! 

We headed to Piazza del Duomo, where the Battistero (where many of the Medicis were baptized) , Giotto’s Campanile (a bell tower measuring almost 280 feet – which you can climb up if you want!) , and the Duomo are clustered together. The Duomo is nothing short of magnificent. The dome was constructed by Brunelleschi, and it’s 463 stairs on winding stone staircases to climb to the top! When you go up, you’re supposed to go directly to the top. But we must’ve read the signs wrong because we took the passage to see the inside of the dome, which is covered in stunning artwork, before going to the top – and unluckily for us the path around the ring of the dome is too small for two people to get through side by side. So we did a lot of awkward squeezing and ‘scusi’s’ and ‘gratzie!’s to ungrateful tourists before finally getting back to where we were supposed to be. When we finally reached the top, the panoramic view of the city was too breathtakingly beautiful to be described adequately.

Inside the Duomo

Next was the Piazza della Signoria, which is kind of like an outdoor art gallery. There’s one of Neptune, which is the first nude ever displayed in public,  a replica statue of Michaelangelo’s David in front of the Palazzo Vecchio, and Cosme Medici perched on a horse. After that, we made our way over to the Mercanto Sant Ambrogio area to try out a pizza place my guide book raved about, called Il Pizzaiuolo. The book did not disappoint. BEST PIZZA EVER, better than the one we had the first day in Rome by far!

Mmm...gelato!

View from San Miniato al Monte

After lunch we went to Basilica Santa Croce and made our way across the Ponte alle Grazie, which had a great view of the Ponte Vecchio. We hiked up a long, winding hill to the Church of San Miniato al Monte, which had another amazing view of the whole city – but this time you could see just how massive the Duomo is compared to everything else! Up at the church we met a hilarious Iraq vet, who was taking a short vacation from his third and last tour. He  made so much fun of Americans, saying things like “Look at all these fit old ladies hiking up these huge hills! These people eat all this pizza, pasta and amazing dessert all the time and they’re still not fat like the fat shits where I’m from in Milwaukee – you know those types, huge beer guts straight off the farm.” The funniest thing is the only reason he started talking to us in the first place was because Amanda was singing a song from the Lion King, he overheard and goes “Your English is pretty good there!” To which responded, “I hope so, since I’m from the states!”

Finally, the Ponte Vecchio – which, who knew, is lined on both sides with extremely expensive jewelry shops! We had two last things to do: After stop for one more gelato, and buy some Kit Kats. Which may sound weird, but according to my first year seminar professor they are un-comparably better in Italy than in the US. Which, as it turns out, is true! Maybe because they were dark chocolate…mmm.

the Ponte Vecchio

I’m going back to Italy one day, no question about it. In particular, Florence. I liked it better than Rome – less touristy, and less creepy men trying to hit on you all the time, saying “hey baby, where you from?” That was the most common thing anyone said to us, besides waiters of course. When I go back, I’m buying REAL extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar and bringing it back. One thing I regret? Not getting real tiramisu. Gotta go back for that. 

Beautiful Florence

National Strike number...? Who's even keeping track at this point?

France had yet ANOTHER grève nationale yesterday, the 6th one for the movement against changing the retirement system hère. But this time they weren’t kidding around at all, and everyone was out in full force. There wasn’t any violence in Bordeaux as far as I know, but there were huge and extremely violent riots all over the country that made headlines all over the world. And when I checked mid-afternoon, the striker count was 480,000 ! Thankfully all the public transportation in Bordeaux wasn’t affected this time, but school was another thing. At Bordeaux 3 where I have translation classes, the students had blockaded every single entrance to all the university buildings with stacked up chairs and tables from the Inside so no one had any chance of getting in whatsoever. Needless to say all classes were cancelled there (but NEVER as sciences-po OF COURSE.)

Riots in Lyon (from nytimes)

To make thing worse, the oil refinery companies have been on strike for the past week, so people are starting to freak out about not having any gas or oil for their cars and houses. There’s even maps online of the limited amount of places where you can get oil – and of course the lines there are massive because no one knows when they’ll go back off strike. All the national trains and Airlines (SNCF, AirFrance) are delaying or cancelling practically all their trains and flights. We’re crossing our fingers and praying that our train actually leaves here for Paris so we can fly out to Italy!

Strikers everywhere...

Another grève nationale...

Tuesday was another ‘greve nationale’, meaning the entire day was a complete mess. All public transportation in Bordeaux was extremely screwed up – one of about every 3 trams was running and the majority of the bus lines weren’t even circulating at all. Some professors cancelled classes (not at sciences-po, of course) on the different Bordeaux campuses and all of the dining halls were closed since the workers were on strike too. The only thing that was open was this little café in the dining hall – which was of course swarmed with people and the women working there said they had no idea when the dining halls would reopen because no one knows how long the strike will be. So instead of risking the tram again I attempted to bike home from campus – which took a pretty loong time since I spend 45 minutes riding the tram to school – and I narrowly avoided getting hit by a few cars again, but at least I didn’t crash into any parked motorcycles this time!

St. Emilion

Me and Karina at the wine tasting

This weekend Karina and I visited St. Emilion, a little touristy/medieval town about 45 minutes from Bordeaux and is also known really well for its famous wines, with Erasmus (the european student exchange program). Unfortunately it was a pretty rainy and cold day, so the tour of the city wasn’t all too fun besides when we visited the underground churches and catacombs. After exploring the city and its gourmet market, we did a wine tasting in one of the Chateaux nearby, called Clos la Madeleine – St. Emilion Grand Cru.

Earlier this week we also booked a small extended weekend trip...to ITALY for next weekend! We're spending Thursday and Friday in Rome, heading to Florence Friday night and staying there for 2 nights until Sunday morning, then taking the train up to Bologna and flying back to Bordeaux from there. SO EXCITED!

Clos La Madeleine - St. Emilion Grand Cru red wine

Dune du Pyla and Jacqui visits!

This week we had another ‘cultural activity’ with Middlebury organized by our ‘guardian angels’. We saw the absolute most bizzare play i’ve ever seen, called « Un pied dans le crime » (A foot in the crime). Imagine a comedic parody of clue – on steroroids, set in the 18th century France with all french characters and their weird cultural quirks – but it wasn’t funny. And as the maestro explained to the audience before the play started, it was traditional in the 18th century for the audience to sing the chorus of the songs in the play along with the actors, so we spent the first 15 minutes of the show learning some completely bizzare songs. And in the end your learn everyone in the play had been lying to eachother, and that no crime had actually been committed – so they all sing together. Probably my favorite play ever.

Top of the Dune du Pyla

Since it was a fluke hot day on Friday in all the cold weather we’ve been having today Karina, Amanda and I took the train to Arcachon again, but this time not to go to the beach. Instead we hike the Dune du Pyla – the highest (i think ?) dune in all of Europe ! It only took about 10-15 minutes to hike to the top since you started pretty high up to begin with, but it was extremely hard to run up basically what was a straight up wall of sand ! There was a beautiful view of the ocean, some islands, and the amazing coastline of Arcachon and many other beaches. Laying on the dune and taking in the sun felt kind of like we were in the desert in Africa – complete with a couple small sand storms here and there which got us all coated in layers of sand.

Me, Amanda, and Karina after hiking up

It was a little bit of a consolation since we decided against visiting Morocco for our mid-semester vacation, because of all the terrorist warnings and things that have been going around here. A few days ago they arrested 12 suspected terrorists in the south of France, including one in Bordeaux – but we’re not too worried. The US state department sent out a travel advisory to all American citizens in France which made the situation sound pretty scary, though. Apparently it’s awful to be living in Paris right now, with one of every few public transports getting stopped and thoroughly inspected by police and their bomb dogs. Nothing really seems to have changed here, besides a couple warnings on the news and in the press. So at least we got a little (fake) bit of Morocco on top of the Dune !

Jacqui and I at the fair

Jacqui visited this weekend from Montpelier !  For some reason we had a lot of extremely bad luck – the our first bus ride into the city we got stopped by the controleurs, the guys who come on public transportation very rarely to check whether everyone has validated passes. And of course we didn’t, so we had to pay the fee. Thankfully I argued it down 15  from the full fee ! We did some touristy stuff, then tried some ‘mexican’ food – which was NOT mexican whatsoever. The ‘fajitas’ we got had no spice whatsoever, and the tortilla chips were probably doritos, served with like a tablespoon of fake guacamole.

Me, Amanda and Karina at the fair

Later we visited the fair/carnival that replaced the circus that was here last month, which has everything like a traditional american state or county fair. Little rollercoasters, a ferris wheel, haunted houses, fair games, and fair food – but industrial sized ! I think they have an extremely overexaggerated impression of what fair food is. The cotton candy is like 6 times of what you can get in the US, and there are 30 different flavors you can choose from (yes, 30, one of my friends counted). They also have churros – which you can only get plain if you order 12 or 20 at a time ! Or if you want one big one, it comes stuffed with chocolate in the center. Then of course there’s all the grease food, fries and candies you could ever want. And they say Americans eat badly !

Ferris wheel next to the monument des Girondins

Voyage en Dordogne

Me and Karina outside the musée de la préhistoire

This weekend we had our « Voyage en Dordogne » organized by Middlebury – basically they put us on a bus and packed as many cultural activities in the Dordogne valley, the one right next to the Gironde (the department where Bordeaux is), as they possibly could. On Saturday after getting up super early, we first visited one of the famous grottes of the valley – where you venture deep into underground cold, dark caves on little carts that reminded me of Gringotts to see some of the first prehistoric drawings and paintings, mostly of animals. It was too dark (and prohibited) to take pictures, but we saw drawings of horses, mammoths, goats, buffalo, rhinoceros…which were pretty cool.

Monument outside the musée

Next they bused us off to another town to see the Musée nationale de la prehistoire, and to have a ‘taste of the region’ for lunch. Unfortunately the ‘confit de canard’, which looks like a chicken breast/wing, served with french fries (can you say odd combination ?) didn’t really agree with too many people’s stomachs, and pretty much everyone felt sick that afternoon. And it didn’t exactly help our queasiness on the bus when they explained how they prepared the duck in that way…Essentially they extremely overfeed the duck, shove something down its throat so the food stays down, then keep feeding it more until it can’t sustain that much food in its stomach and eventually dies. Then they cook the breast in some oil, hyper-salt it, and serve it. At least that’s the way I understood it as I was cringing listening to this process. Yum, right ?

Prehistoric paintings inside the grottes

After lunch we visited the Grotte de Lascaux, kind of like the grotte we had visited that morning but there were many more drawings and paintings in much more detail, practically covering all the walls of the cave.  Later that afternoon we had a tour of the Château de Beynac, which has a beautiful view over a huge part of the Dordogne valley. It also happens to be where King Richard the Lionheart lived and ruled from 1189-1199! Luckily, the tour finished just in time for an amazing sunset !

Barons of the Chateau de Beynac

Chateau de Beynac

We finally finished off the day by arriving in Sarlat, quaint little medieval town, for another ‘taste of the region’s cuisine’ for dinner – which started around 10pm, so we were all completely exhausted.  We didn’t have much more luck with the food that night either – the entrée looked something like Irish cabbage stew put on a plate next to some soggy bread that had no taste with some weird looking slice of sausage on top, with some uncooked ham rib on the side.

         

Amanda and Me - View from the gardens

After completely crashing at the hotel after a long Saturday, we got up super early to start our next jam-packed day, which started with a guided tour of the historic monuments and sites of Sarlat for a few hours. Afterwards we visited the Jardins de Marqueyssac, a huge botannical garden which was a mix of French and English styled gardens, traditional and organized versus a mixed design style with plants, flowers, and trees. We walked through the gardens to another beautiful panorama of another part of the Dordogne valley and river.

Monbazillac

Our last stop on the trip was a guided tour and wine tasting at Monbazillac, a renowned chateau which specializes in sweet white wines. After finally getting back to Bordeaux, I was so exhausted at dinner I couldn’t even think or speak and french – and of course my host family wanted to describe everything I’d done!