June 2011
163 posts
Turning Up the Heat in Florence
Okay, let me apologize in advance. Don’t feel obligated to read all this, or look at all the pictures. I haven’t written everything down yet, but I have identified 27 pictures as representative of my day. To put that in perspective, I think I had about 100 other pictures posted for the first month of my trip. Or, if you really like perspective, think of how much I must’ve walked today to get those...
Travel Day: Going Solo
Alex and I split up today, meaning that until Monday July 4th, I’m traveling completely solo. Alex is staying in Vicenza for another day before flying back to the States from Milan Friday morning. The first stop on my tour of Italy is Florence, and to get there from Vicenza I took a bus to a train, plus a 4km walk with my 13 kilo backpack (thanks, Google Maps!). But anyway, check out where I’m...
Straight Outta Shakespeare
Another earlyish morning so we could check out Verona before Alex and I split ways tomorrow (:’(). This time we were accompanied by Flora and her friend Eleanora (ell-ay-a-nora, for some reason Alex and I messed that up at least a few times), though perhaps we taught them more about the place than vice versa thanks to Alex’s guidebook. Anyway, first we grabbed lunch at a place Eleanora’s father...
Un regalo da dio
No joke, I fulfilled one of my childhood dreams today; I finally made it to Venice. For whatever reason, though it probably has to do with six years of Italian classes and twenty-two years of love for Italian food, I’ve always believed in the magic of Venice, and was not disappointed.
Alex, Flora, and I were privileged to be joined by Flora’s friend’s host family from when they both were studying...
Sailboating! Sailboating? Sailboating!
Alex and I were spoiled shamelessly today by our hostess, Yvonne, her daughter, Flora, and her boyfriend, Roberto: they took us out on their sailboat. Of course, this required a significant sacrifice of our own, as “boat-people” try to get out on the sea as early as possible, meaning our normal ready by 11am just wasn’t gonna cut it.
Somehow, we made it out of their house by 9:30, but due to...
A day in Padova
Yvonne, our host-mom, drove me, Alex, and our host-sister Flora to the city of Padova this morning. Padova, you may remember it from Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, is another city in Veneto (the region of Italy with Venice, Vicenza, etc.) of 300,000. It’s famous for two reasons. First, it contains some of the finest work of Giotto, one of the first Renaissance painters. We saw...
Touring Vicenza
There are six major tourist attractions in Vicenza; today, I saw three of them. The first was an art museum that showcased mainly local works, as well as an entire floor devoted to Russian icons. If you don’t know what Russian icons are (I didn’t), they seem to be religious (Christian) paintings done where the people are painted on wood, and the rest of the scene is done on canvas....
