So I'm back in Italy for the week. Unfortunately, since I have three exams next week and a research project due, I'm spending most of my free time studying even though it's spring break at Sorbonne. So, you know, no exciting blog posts with pretty photos. Instead I suggest you read With My Swag All On My Shoulder, the detailed account of my mother on her jaunt through Europe. Yes, Mum and Dad are here with me (in fact, that's why I came at all!) So, you know, bombard Mum with comments (no, seriously, do. It'll be hilarious since she's largely Internet-illiterate and setting up the blog alone was almost beyond her. Comments will be so far outside her comfort zone that it actually WILL be funny. Until I have to come in and save her, of course).
Anyway, might post some pics and thoughts once I'm back in France and exams are over. No promises that the language will be English, though - you should just HEAR my Italian now!
Showing posts with label study. Show all posts
Showing posts with label study. Show all posts
Monday, 29 April 2013
Monday, 25 March 2013
Living The Glamourous Life
So I've been really slack in posting lately, and I do apologise. My life is crazy. Apparently moving to another continent hasn't changed a thing. Between uni and work I barely even have a social life anymore! And my exchange has become fairly humdrum, anyway. All the things that were weird and notable and exciting when I got here are just regular old Paris now. Either way, I offer a series of random stories, thoughts and updates from the past little while.
I got my first piece of homework back from one of my literature classes today. It was the devoir sur table (in-class written assessment) from my Literature and Opera class. I've been worried since I've been doing all my assessments as commentaire composes, since that's all I know, but I'm still not sure I'm doing them right, and I warned the teacher about it. I was worrying for nothing. I got a 15/20 for it, which is supposed to be really good in a French uni, and her main criticism was that my spectrum of inquiry was too broad, so I didn't have time or room to go into detail on any points, but what I'd written was good. There was a bunch of grammatical mistakes and miswrites (typos by hand!) but there were no 'construction' problems and she marked a few areas as 'good', and when she talked about the themes of the extracts and what we should have covered (as a general idea), she even gave the title of my devoir as an example of a good one-sentence analysis and theme for the commentaire. I was amazed! Hopefully I'll get another assigment back tomorrow, but after this first mark I'm feeling pretty optomistic about this semester.
I've been freaking out my European friends with the amount of travelling I do. I spent this weekend in Belgium - went up Thursday night and returned last night, Sunday. E3-Harelbeke was on Friday and Gent-Wevelgem was on Sunday, both major cycling races, and both Harelbeke and Wevelgem are a short distance from Kortrijk in Belgium which is just over the border from Lille and Roubaix. While I was there I spent a bit of time in Gent and its suburbs, lots of transfers through Kortrijk and an afternoon in Brugge. In other words, I'm now really well acquainted with the West Flanders region of Belgium. Feel free to check out Peloton Cafe for my E3-Harelbeke and Gent-Wevelgem pieces and my profile-feature on Mitch Docker, Australian Orica-GreenEDGE cyclist.
Attached is the beginning of an unfinished post from a few weeks ago about a class trip...
I also made some friends on this trip. I finally talked to some of the French girls in my Lit and Opera class, which is handy, because two of them are in my Medieval Language class directly after Lit and Opera on Mondays. Up til now I've been too shy and unsure of my French to talk to the native French students, so I was pretty proud of myself. I've also made a couple of friends in my Morphosyntaxe class - we've been teamed up for an oral presentation next week, but I like them alright. My linguistics classes this semester are great - Medieval to Classical Language and Morphosyntaxe are really engaging and interesting. Even Lit and Opera and Divine Love Lit classes are pretty good, since I've mostly enjoyed the texts we've studied. It's Thursdays that are a bit trying, but there's only five more weeks of class left, so I'll survive (five weeks! Holy moly! Where did the semester go?) And then after that I apply to graduate and I enter the big wide adult world! Scary thought.
In my quest for the best hot chocolate in Paris, last weekend I went to a teahouse called Angelina's that a friend recommended to me to test his assertion that they have the best hot chocolates. I've never been to a cafe that has a queue before, that was an interesting experience. Unsurprisingly the hot chocolate was rather disappointing - it was Spanish-style, not French-style, and the Spaniards don't know how to do hot chocolate. The place was worth it for the experience though, I'd recommend it.
I think that's all for now. I might post some photos at some point if I get around to it. In the meantime I need to eat dinner and then finish ghost-writing Tiffany Cromwell's blog. Ah, the glamorous life of the professional journalist...not.
I got my first piece of homework back from one of my literature classes today. It was the devoir sur table (in-class written assessment) from my Literature and Opera class. I've been worried since I've been doing all my assessments as commentaire composes, since that's all I know, but I'm still not sure I'm doing them right, and I warned the teacher about it. I was worrying for nothing. I got a 15/20 for it, which is supposed to be really good in a French uni, and her main criticism was that my spectrum of inquiry was too broad, so I didn't have time or room to go into detail on any points, but what I'd written was good. There was a bunch of grammatical mistakes and miswrites (typos by hand!) but there were no 'construction' problems and she marked a few areas as 'good', and when she talked about the themes of the extracts and what we should have covered (as a general idea), she even gave the title of my devoir as an example of a good one-sentence analysis and theme for the commentaire. I was amazed! Hopefully I'll get another assigment back tomorrow, but after this first mark I'm feeling pretty optomistic about this semester.
I've been freaking out my European friends with the amount of travelling I do. I spent this weekend in Belgium - went up Thursday night and returned last night, Sunday. E3-Harelbeke was on Friday and Gent-Wevelgem was on Sunday, both major cycling races, and both Harelbeke and Wevelgem are a short distance from Kortrijk in Belgium which is just over the border from Lille and Roubaix. While I was there I spent a bit of time in Gent and its suburbs, lots of transfers through Kortrijk and an afternoon in Brugge. In other words, I'm now really well acquainted with the West Flanders region of Belgium. Feel free to check out Peloton Cafe for my E3-Harelbeke and Gent-Wevelgem pieces and my profile-feature on Mitch Docker, Australian Orica-GreenEDGE cyclist.
Attached is the beginning of an unfinished post from a few weeks ago about a class trip...
I'm not quite as over-the-top with it as I am with my Disney obsession, but I'm absolutely mad for Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera (though we prefer the term 'phanatics'). I love it so much that the first time I saw an English version of the French novel it was based on (in my university bookshop, of all places) I bought and read it straight away. In fact, the first thing that caught my attention on my first trip to Paris was the Opera Garnier, or Old Paris Opera House. The Opera Garnier was the model for the Opera Populaire in the Phantom of the Opera film, so as soon as I saw it I realised I was in the Phantom city (not to mention the city of many other things that are educated and cultural and have nothing to do with tourist stuff). Anyway, you get the point.
I put my name down a few months back to go to a rehearsal of the opera Cenerentola at the Opera Bastille with my Literature and Opera class. We're studying Cenerentola this semester, since it was developed from the story Cendrillon by French writer Charles Perrault (which later became the Disney movie Cinderella - what, everything relates to Disney!), so I thought it would be good to choose that opera to see, plus the Opera Bastille, I mean, pretty cool, right? So you can imagine the kind of excited sounds I made when I realised there'd been a venue change and we were going to the Opera Garnier. Performer's entrance. Exclusive entry. The whole kit and caboodle. Whoa, dude.
I also made some friends on this trip. I finally talked to some of the French girls in my Lit and Opera class, which is handy, because two of them are in my Medieval Language class directly after Lit and Opera on Mondays. Up til now I've been too shy and unsure of my French to talk to the native French students, so I was pretty proud of myself. I've also made a couple of friends in my Morphosyntaxe class - we've been teamed up for an oral presentation next week, but I like them alright. My linguistics classes this semester are great - Medieval to Classical Language and Morphosyntaxe are really engaging and interesting. Even Lit and Opera and Divine Love Lit classes are pretty good, since I've mostly enjoyed the texts we've studied. It's Thursdays that are a bit trying, but there's only five more weeks of class left, so I'll survive (five weeks! Holy moly! Where did the semester go?) And then after that I apply to graduate and I enter the big wide adult world! Scary thought.
In my quest for the best hot chocolate in Paris, last weekend I went to a teahouse called Angelina's that a friend recommended to me to test his assertion that they have the best hot chocolates. I've never been to a cafe that has a queue before, that was an interesting experience. Unsurprisingly the hot chocolate was rather disappointing - it was Spanish-style, not French-style, and the Spaniards don't know how to do hot chocolate. The place was worth it for the experience though, I'd recommend it.
I think that's all for now. I might post some photos at some point if I get around to it. In the meantime I need to eat dinner and then finish ghost-writing Tiffany Cromwell's blog. Ah, the glamorous life of the professional journalist...not.
Friday, 30 November 2012
Following the path of enlightenment (Italy, Part V)
Oh c’mon, guys, how could I not make an Angels and Demons reference? Everywhere I looked in Rome I found another scene from the book, another factual tidbit from the story. It’s Dan Brown fan heaven, though I admit that I felt like a huge cliché walking around, mentally referencing everything against what I’ve learned from Robert Langdon.
So I arrived in Rome on Monday around midday. Made my way to the hostel, a conveniently short walk from the train station, and dumped my backpack there to go exploring for the day. While checking in the reception guy convinced me to go on a guided walking tour of the Vatican and St. Peter's Basilica. Oh, why not. I'm in Rome, I kind of wanted to go there anyway, and it saved me figuring it out for myself.
Leaving my bag, I headed back to Roma Termini train station to take the metro over towards Vatican City, The Vatican. Fun fact about Rome: unlike most other major European cities, Rome's metro system is tiny, just two lines. Why? Because modern Rome is built on top of the ruins of several older cities of Rome, and no serious metro system can be built without destroying that. I made it to the right station, stopped in a pizza place for a quick lunch and then headed to the meeting point for the tour. After half an hour or so the nine of us - seven young women, one older guy and Daniella, our guide - left the country of Italy and headed into the state of The Vatican.
Big fat travel tip for The Vatican: everyone wants to go to St. Peter's Basilica. Don't. The queue will keep you amused for hours. Instead, go to the Vatican Museums. After five minutes in the queue, you'll get a combined ticket for both the Museums and the Basilica that lets you walk straight from one into the other, which is what we did. The Museums are overwhelming. Imagine the Louvre crammed into a space one-third the size. Every single place you look there's a statue or an artefact - beautiful, but diminished by the prolificity.
What I really enjoyed was the Basilica. We laughed at the silly tourists lining up all the way across St. Peter's Square for tickets as we walked out of the museum and into the Basilica. It was amazing. I was surprised. I'm not the biggest fan of the top dogs of the Catholic Church, so I figured a lot of the hype about The Vatican, St. Peter's Basilica and so on was just hyperbolic and the ramblings of ignorant tourists. Well, maybe I'm a little too skeptical now.
The Basilica is amazing. It's huge beyond belief - it's the biggest church in the world, and after my travels, especially through Italy, I thought I'd seen some damn big churches and religious buildings. Even after all that, St. Peter's Basilica took my breath away. The size of it really is incomprehensible - and there's even a series of marks on the floor of the centre aisle from the main doors marking the length of the nave of other major churches around the world - but the decoration is also astounding. The amount of effort and material that goes into decorating a building of that size is beyond belief, and it looks lovely.
I got particularly excited by two things - the first was seeing the tomb of King Kristina, one of my heroes. Yes, King Kristina. Born on December 8th, 1626, exactly 366 years before me, she was raised as the crown prince and heir of Sweden following the death of her father, and was formally crowned as its sovereign king at the age of 24. Though female, Kristina insisted on being addressed and crowned as the king because in Sweden the queen was the powerless puppet wife of the king, and it was her husband who held all the power. Essentially, she was one sassy woman with a funky name and the same birthday as me. Though I knew she abdicated the throne after a few years to convert to Catholicism (Sweden was a strongly Protestant country) I didn't know that she was buried in the Vatican. That was pretty cool.
The other thing was part of the architecture. Along the top of the wall of the Basilica runs a mosaic strip two metres high bearing an inscription in Latin, I can't remember what. There's another inscription running around the base of the huge, vaulted dome above the central nave of the Basilica, too, which says something like 'You are Peter, you are the rock and to you I will give the keys to the kingdom of Heaven'. In Latin. See, my name comes from Latin. Actually, it comes from the Latin word for heaven. So the part where it says 'keys to the kingdom of Heaven' (which is actually rendered 'of the heavens', by the way), reads 'CLAVES REGNI CAELORUM'. Quick Latin lesson - 'caelum' is the singular nominative form of the word for heaven, that is, the singular subject. 'Caeli' is the singular genitive, i.e. possessive ('of heaven') and 'caelorum' is the plural genitive ('of the heavens'), but they're all just conjugations, forms, of the same word. So my name is written in two-metre-high letters on the walls of St. Peter's Basilica. Me, the girl who could never have the personalised mug or t-shirt or ruler with her name on it like you see in shops because my name is never one of the options. Me. On the walls of St. Peter's Basilica. Nice.
We walked outside and watched the Swiss Guards for a while (think the Italian version of the Secret Service out of the 1600s and you have some idea) and then finished the tour in St. Peter's Square just before sunset. I then amused myself greatly by standing on the edge of St. Peter's Square and jumping from one foot to the other and thereby jumping the border between Italy and the Vatican. In Italy, now I'm in The Vatican! Back in Italy, now in the Vatican again! It was the first time I've visited another country and known where the border was, so I took advantage.
I sat down for a hot chocolate and then walked down to Castel Sant'Angelo, again, a Dan Brown reference. It was dark by this point, so I wandered for 20 minutes in the mosquito-ed cold and then decided that I'd 'seen' the castle and I should go and have dinner and go home. I found a little cafe in a random street, ate a margherita pizza followed by an espresso coffee (true Italian and French espresso - yuck! I don't know how they can drink the stuff!) and then began the walk back to the metro to take a train home to the hostel.
Day 2 and Day Last in Rome - basically a bombarding of my poor senses. I accomplished exactly two/three things with the whole day - il Colosseo e il Foro Romano e il Palatino. Translated, that's the Colosseum which is just down the road from the complex that houses the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill. The Forum is a big, ongoing Roman dig complex that's massive and easy to get lost in and hard to see all of at once. Palatine Hill is a giant hill with some still-intact tall structures that you can walk up - the stairs are still there. Both are thoroughly worth seeing, and rather than waste time and words I'll simply post some photos below. (Also, another travel tip: to avoid the queues at the Colosseum, buy the combined ticket at the entrance to the Forum or Palatine Hill and you can literally walk straight through the barriers at the Colosseum afterwards). My foot got the hugest workout between the two complexes and my brain became overwhelmed by about 4pm and I decided to bail, go back to the hostel and get stuck into the homework that was due the afternoon that I returned to France. I did my best to focus on homework, taking a break only to go upstairs and eat the free pasta dinner that was provided. Then I repacked my bag, set my alarm for 4am and crashed out around 10pm.
I was actually up at 4, was clothed, cleaned and checked out by 4.30am. I made it to the station, hopped on the next shuttle to Ciampino airport and made it into the boarding queue for my flight just in time. No weight problems this time, despite my concerns, either because I was wearing all my clothes under my coat or because all my heavy textbooks were in the handbag discretely slung over my arm. A short, two-hour flight and I was back in Paris (well, Beauvais). Shuttle to city, walk to metro, take metro to Le Bourget, bingo baby, I've been to Italy!
Mind you, I had class that same afternoon, and my first assignment was due in...
So I arrived in Rome on Monday around midday. Made my way to the hostel, a conveniently short walk from the train station, and dumped my backpack there to go exploring for the day. While checking in the reception guy convinced me to go on a guided walking tour of the Vatican and St. Peter's Basilica. Oh, why not. I'm in Rome, I kind of wanted to go there anyway, and it saved me figuring it out for myself.
Leaving my bag, I headed back to Roma Termini train station to take the metro over towards Vatican City, The Vatican. Fun fact about Rome: unlike most other major European cities, Rome's metro system is tiny, just two lines. Why? Because modern Rome is built on top of the ruins of several older cities of Rome, and no serious metro system can be built without destroying that. I made it to the right station, stopped in a pizza place for a quick lunch and then headed to the meeting point for the tour. After half an hour or so the nine of us - seven young women, one older guy and Daniella, our guide - left the country of Italy and headed into the state of The Vatican.
Big fat travel tip for The Vatican: everyone wants to go to St. Peter's Basilica. Don't. The queue will keep you amused for hours. Instead, go to the Vatican Museums. After five minutes in the queue, you'll get a combined ticket for both the Museums and the Basilica that lets you walk straight from one into the other, which is what we did. The Museums are overwhelming. Imagine the Louvre crammed into a space one-third the size. Every single place you look there's a statue or an artefact - beautiful, but diminished by the prolificity.
What I really enjoyed was the Basilica. We laughed at the silly tourists lining up all the way across St. Peter's Square for tickets as we walked out of the museum and into the Basilica. It was amazing. I was surprised. I'm not the biggest fan of the top dogs of the Catholic Church, so I figured a lot of the hype about The Vatican, St. Peter's Basilica and so on was just hyperbolic and the ramblings of ignorant tourists. Well, maybe I'm a little too skeptical now.
The Basilica is amazing. It's huge beyond belief - it's the biggest church in the world, and after my travels, especially through Italy, I thought I'd seen some damn big churches and religious buildings. Even after all that, St. Peter's Basilica took my breath away. The size of it really is incomprehensible - and there's even a series of marks on the floor of the centre aisle from the main doors marking the length of the nave of other major churches around the world - but the decoration is also astounding. The amount of effort and material that goes into decorating a building of that size is beyond belief, and it looks lovely.
I got particularly excited by two things - the first was seeing the tomb of King Kristina, one of my heroes. Yes, King Kristina. Born on December 8th, 1626, exactly 366 years before me, she was raised as the crown prince and heir of Sweden following the death of her father, and was formally crowned as its sovereign king at the age of 24. Though female, Kristina insisted on being addressed and crowned as the king because in Sweden the queen was the powerless puppet wife of the king, and it was her husband who held all the power. Essentially, she was one sassy woman with a funky name and the same birthday as me. Though I knew she abdicated the throne after a few years to convert to Catholicism (Sweden was a strongly Protestant country) I didn't know that she was buried in the Vatican. That was pretty cool.
The other thing was part of the architecture. Along the top of the wall of the Basilica runs a mosaic strip two metres high bearing an inscription in Latin, I can't remember what. There's another inscription running around the base of the huge, vaulted dome above the central nave of the Basilica, too, which says something like 'You are Peter, you are the rock and to you I will give the keys to the kingdom of Heaven'. In Latin. See, my name comes from Latin. Actually, it comes from the Latin word for heaven. So the part where it says 'keys to the kingdom of Heaven' (which is actually rendered 'of the heavens', by the way), reads 'CLAVES REGNI CAELORUM'. Quick Latin lesson - 'caelum' is the singular nominative form of the word for heaven, that is, the singular subject. 'Caeli' is the singular genitive, i.e. possessive ('of heaven') and 'caelorum' is the plural genitive ('of the heavens'), but they're all just conjugations, forms, of the same word. So my name is written in two-metre-high letters on the walls of St. Peter's Basilica. Me, the girl who could never have the personalised mug or t-shirt or ruler with her name on it like you see in shops because my name is never one of the options. Me. On the walls of St. Peter's Basilica. Nice.
We walked outside and watched the Swiss Guards for a while (think the Italian version of the Secret Service out of the 1600s and you have some idea) and then finished the tour in St. Peter's Square just before sunset. I then amused myself greatly by standing on the edge of St. Peter's Square and jumping from one foot to the other and thereby jumping the border between Italy and the Vatican. In Italy, now I'm in The Vatican! Back in Italy, now in the Vatican again! It was the first time I've visited another country and known where the border was, so I took advantage.
I sat down for a hot chocolate and then walked down to Castel Sant'Angelo, again, a Dan Brown reference. It was dark by this point, so I wandered for 20 minutes in the mosquito-ed cold and then decided that I'd 'seen' the castle and I should go and have dinner and go home. I found a little cafe in a random street, ate a margherita pizza followed by an espresso coffee (true Italian and French espresso - yuck! I don't know how they can drink the stuff!) and then began the walk back to the metro to take a train home to the hostel.
Day 2 and Day Last in Rome - basically a bombarding of my poor senses. I accomplished exactly two/three things with the whole day - il Colosseo e il Foro Romano e il Palatino. Translated, that's the Colosseum which is just down the road from the complex that houses the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill. The Forum is a big, ongoing Roman dig complex that's massive and easy to get lost in and hard to see all of at once. Palatine Hill is a giant hill with some still-intact tall structures that you can walk up - the stairs are still there. Both are thoroughly worth seeing, and rather than waste time and words I'll simply post some photos below. (Also, another travel tip: to avoid the queues at the Colosseum, buy the combined ticket at the entrance to the Forum or Palatine Hill and you can literally walk straight through the barriers at the Colosseum afterwards). My foot got the hugest workout between the two complexes and my brain became overwhelmed by about 4pm and I decided to bail, go back to the hostel and get stuck into the homework that was due the afternoon that I returned to France. I did my best to focus on homework, taking a break only to go upstairs and eat the free pasta dinner that was provided. Then I repacked my bag, set my alarm for 4am and crashed out around 10pm.
I was actually up at 4, was clothed, cleaned and checked out by 4.30am. I made it to the station, hopped on the next shuttle to Ciampino airport and made it into the boarding queue for my flight just in time. No weight problems this time, despite my concerns, either because I was wearing all my clothes under my coat or because all my heavy textbooks were in the handbag discretely slung over my arm. A short, two-hour flight and I was back in Paris (well, Beauvais). Shuttle to city, walk to metro, take metro to Le Bourget, bingo baby, I've been to Italy!
Mind you, I had class that same afternoon, and my first assignment was due in...
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| Random architecture in Vatican City |
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| Room of Animals |
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| A ceiling. With painting |
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| The seal of...goodness-only-remembers which Pope |
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| St. Peter's Square from outside the Basilica |
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| Fuzzy photos inside the Basilica |
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| King Kristina's tomb |
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| My name. In the Vatican. |
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| The Swiss guards (and they were pretty cute, too) |
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| Sunset over St. Peter's Basilica |
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| Il Colosseo |
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| Some local wildlife... |
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| Il Foro Romano |
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| A Roman stadium |
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| Views of Rome from Palatine Hill |
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| That's St. Peter's over to the left |
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| Failed attempts at being arty |
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| Inside the Colosseum |
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| Bored, footsore experimental Colosseum photograph |
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| The Colosseum from the upper levels |
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| Clouds and Colosseums |
Wednesday, 14 November 2012
Bane, Ronan...Firenze (Italy, Part IV)
Yes, a Harry Potter reference! Come on, has no-one else made the connection between J.K. Rowling's centaur and the Italian name of Florence?
My last two days in Florence were filled with...well, more of the same, really. On Saturday morning I finally made it to San Spirito - lovely, by the way - and was just sitting down to the best cappuccino I've had in forever (travel tip - if you pay more than 1.50 for a cappuccino in Italy, you're getting thoroughly ripped off) when my phone rang. Mariana was in town and she and Andrea wanted to swing by and pick me up. Mariana said Andrea had somewhere he wanted to take us, and she murmured something about 'place' and 'Michaelangelo'. I got excited. I'd heard good things about Piazza Michaelangiolo, but it's hard to get to without a car.
So I guzzled my wonderful cheap coffee and hobbled up to the station to meet them. The Piazza was wonderful. It's on a hill about Florence, so you get the most amazing views of the town - and, of course, another recreation of Michaelangelo's David, which is located in the Galleria dell'Academia in Firenze and which I chose not to see cause it costs a bit to get in. Another travel note for Italy - unlike France, everything costs, and it adds up very quickly. Anyway, amazing amazing views from the Piazza Michaelangiolo and from the two churches on the hill just above it. We headed so Andrea could have 'the most amazing kebab in Florence' and Mariana and I could have what had to be the worst chips. We then grabbed a coffee in Piazza della Repubblica, before the others headed back to Prato for a bit and I visited the Chiesa della Santa Trinita down by the river for a while. Yes, I'm aware I have a bit of a thing with churches. No, I'm not concerned by it. Santa Trinita was lovely, too, though a little bit eerie after dark. The eerie was kind of fun, though, in an odd sort of way.
Later that evening I met up with Mariana and Andrea again for an aperitivo, which is from what I can tell like a cheap students' thing, where you get a basic drink and free reign over a basic sort of buffet. Needless to say Andrea got two drinks that night, because the 'simple, plain' spritzer he recommended for me was, as expected, gross. I headed home early because the buses don't run late, I'm a killjoy and I had homework - pick your reasons. Sunday began with the much-anticipated trip to the Battistero, which was nice, some last-minute shopping at the market and the Piazza della Repubblica, and the exploration of an upscale chocolate shop. Has anyone here ever seen sugared violets? Yes, I mean actual flowers that have been dipped in sugar to turn them into sweets. I'd heard of them, but...well, this place had sugared violets and sugared roses. The shop clerk was a little confused when I just wanted one of each 'to try' instead of buying them by the kilo like normal people (the first time I mentioned trying one, she handed me a violet to eat straight up), so they threw them in for free with the chocolates I bought! They're an odd delicacy - it was like having a violet field in my mouth, but the concept of tasting flowers in your mouth rather than your nasal cavity was actually quite pleasant and didn't freak me out like I expected.
My final adventure was an accident, like always. I was looking for one final church to visit so I could feel less guilty about bailing early because I was tired and cold and had homework when I found myself in a line for what had looked like a church from the outside but which didn't seem to be on the inside. It cost me 6 euro to get inside the Cappella di Medicee, and as I wandered the crypt I wasn't sure it was worth it. Then I found the stairs and ascended into the chapel itself.
The Medici family, in their time, were the royal family of Florence and thus Italy, and in a way much of Europe too. They were powerful, produced a Pope or two along their way and were uber-rich beyond our understanding of the word. So when they decided to build their own private chapel to bury and honour their ancestors, they were thorough. And holy schmackeroly, were they! Every surface inlaid with stone mosaics, and not just any stones, semiprecious ones! Huge ceilings, large tombs and statues for all the big names of the family, the works. And the most amazing part? It was TASTEFUL. No opulence, no overt, grandiose displays of pomposity such as are usually seen when rich people let their money loose. It was very well done and truly beautiful, making it both awe-inspiring and breath-taking (my breath was so taken that I had to sit down - though...that might have been the foot).
I left Florence early the next morning, taking a train from Firenze Santa Maria Novella at a quarter past nine. It was an interesting stay I'd had. Youth hostels always make for new experiences, though the way I ended up in the Frano-Japanese dorm was interesting. The only other girl who was in there during my stay, albeit for one night, and who wasn't French or Japanese was a Canadian girl studying in Lyon, France, for a year, Louise. Apart from Laure there was also Carole to keep me amused, another older French girl who I chose to stop talking to because she didn't know when to stop... (in my thoughts: 'Carole, it's half past eight in the morning and I'm standing in the corridor in my pajamas and bed hair holding a towel. Though I'm sure the girls on the second floor are all enjoying the pre-breakfast amusement, can you please figure out a little quicker that you need to run out of things to say so I can please how my shower now?') You get the best stories from staying in youth hostels. I'll try and post the final Italy instalment in the next few days - the homework situation has been getting demanding!
My last two days in Florence were filled with...well, more of the same, really. On Saturday morning I finally made it to San Spirito - lovely, by the way - and was just sitting down to the best cappuccino I've had in forever (travel tip - if you pay more than 1.50 for a cappuccino in Italy, you're getting thoroughly ripped off) when my phone rang. Mariana was in town and she and Andrea wanted to swing by and pick me up. Mariana said Andrea had somewhere he wanted to take us, and she murmured something about 'place' and 'Michaelangelo'. I got excited. I'd heard good things about Piazza Michaelangiolo, but it's hard to get to without a car.
So I guzzled my wonderful cheap coffee and hobbled up to the station to meet them. The Piazza was wonderful. It's on a hill about Florence, so you get the most amazing views of the town - and, of course, another recreation of Michaelangelo's David, which is located in the Galleria dell'Academia in Firenze and which I chose not to see cause it costs a bit to get in. Another travel note for Italy - unlike France, everything costs, and it adds up very quickly. Anyway, amazing amazing views from the Piazza Michaelangiolo and from the two churches on the hill just above it. We headed so Andrea could have 'the most amazing kebab in Florence' and Mariana and I could have what had to be the worst chips. We then grabbed a coffee in Piazza della Repubblica, before the others headed back to Prato for a bit and I visited the Chiesa della Santa Trinita down by the river for a while. Yes, I'm aware I have a bit of a thing with churches. No, I'm not concerned by it. Santa Trinita was lovely, too, though a little bit eerie after dark. The eerie was kind of fun, though, in an odd sort of way.
Later that evening I met up with Mariana and Andrea again for an aperitivo, which is from what I can tell like a cheap students' thing, where you get a basic drink and free reign over a basic sort of buffet. Needless to say Andrea got two drinks that night, because the 'simple, plain' spritzer he recommended for me was, as expected, gross. I headed home early because the buses don't run late, I'm a killjoy and I had homework - pick your reasons. Sunday began with the much-anticipated trip to the Battistero, which was nice, some last-minute shopping at the market and the Piazza della Repubblica, and the exploration of an upscale chocolate shop. Has anyone here ever seen sugared violets? Yes, I mean actual flowers that have been dipped in sugar to turn them into sweets. I'd heard of them, but...well, this place had sugared violets and sugared roses. The shop clerk was a little confused when I just wanted one of each 'to try' instead of buying them by the kilo like normal people (the first time I mentioned trying one, she handed me a violet to eat straight up), so they threw them in for free with the chocolates I bought! They're an odd delicacy - it was like having a violet field in my mouth, but the concept of tasting flowers in your mouth rather than your nasal cavity was actually quite pleasant and didn't freak me out like I expected.
My final adventure was an accident, like always. I was looking for one final church to visit so I could feel less guilty about bailing early because I was tired and cold and had homework when I found myself in a line for what had looked like a church from the outside but which didn't seem to be on the inside. It cost me 6 euro to get inside the Cappella di Medicee, and as I wandered the crypt I wasn't sure it was worth it. Then I found the stairs and ascended into the chapel itself.
The Medici family, in their time, were the royal family of Florence and thus Italy, and in a way much of Europe too. They were powerful, produced a Pope or two along their way and were uber-rich beyond our understanding of the word. So when they decided to build their own private chapel to bury and honour their ancestors, they were thorough. And holy schmackeroly, were they! Every surface inlaid with stone mosaics, and not just any stones, semiprecious ones! Huge ceilings, large tombs and statues for all the big names of the family, the works. And the most amazing part? It was TASTEFUL. No opulence, no overt, grandiose displays of pomposity such as are usually seen when rich people let their money loose. It was very well done and truly beautiful, making it both awe-inspiring and breath-taking (my breath was so taken that I had to sit down - though...that might have been the foot).
I left Florence early the next morning, taking a train from Firenze Santa Maria Novella at a quarter past nine. It was an interesting stay I'd had. Youth hostels always make for new experiences, though the way I ended up in the Frano-Japanese dorm was interesting. The only other girl who was in there during my stay, albeit for one night, and who wasn't French or Japanese was a Canadian girl studying in Lyon, France, for a year, Louise. Apart from Laure there was also Carole to keep me amused, another older French girl who I chose to stop talking to because she didn't know when to stop... (in my thoughts: 'Carole, it's half past eight in the morning and I'm standing in the corridor in my pajamas and bed hair holding a towel. Though I'm sure the girls on the second floor are all enjoying the pre-breakfast amusement, can you please figure out a little quicker that you need to run out of things to say so I can please how my shower now?') You get the best stories from staying in youth hostels. I'll try and post the final Italy instalment in the next few days - the homework situation has been getting demanding!
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| With Andrea and Mariana above the city of Florence |
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| Firenze from the Piazza Michaelangiolo |
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| From the steps of Santo Miniato del Monte |
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| Florence |
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| Introducing the Florence Historical Drummers and Flag Tossing Marching Corps Band! (Yeah, I made that title up, but they were cool) |
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| The roof of the Battistero |
Wednesday, 24 October 2012
Ville de Luxe and Deutschland - photos
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| Lower Luxembourg from the Bock casements |
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| Looking down towards St. Michael's |
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| The northern side of the casements |
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| The square white-yellow building on the right is the hostel |
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| Luxembourg from the Bock casements bridge |
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| The Luxembourg Grand Ducal palace |
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| Waiting for the Prince and Countess after the civil wedding |
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| Views of Luxembourg while bushbashing |
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| The Petrusse Express road train |
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| The river looking towards the casements |
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| Walking along the river beside St. Michael's |
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| Basilica of St. Castor, Koblenz |
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| Castles along the Rhine |
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| The view from the front of the boat |
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| Towns along the Rhine |
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| Me with a castle - who knows which one! |
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| A stopping place on the Rhine |
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| Waving goodbye to Jeff and Laura |
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| Welcome to Sankt Goar! |
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| Koblenz at night from Festung Ehrenbreitstein |
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| The elevator to the Festung |
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| Views of Koblenz |
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| Daises at the Festung |
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| The cable car from the Festung to Koblenz |
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| Goodbye, Koblenz HBF! |
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