Blessings From the Pope...

I haven't posted in a while, but I have a story that is just too good to not tell.  So here is what went down.  Trent, Luke, and I all had planned on going to a blessing from the Pope south of Rome.  We got up very early in the morning and headed to Termini train station.  We arrived and had no idea what train we needed to get on.  I asked a train engineer which train to get on and we all got on the one he said.

Well, the train pulls out and we begin our 40 minute train ride to Castel Gandolfo, the Pope's summer home.  The ride was great, but there was a loud woman sitting next to us that started to drive me nuts.  The train continued on down the tracks and an hour later, all three of us began to get worried.  I finally ended up asking another person on the train if we were ever going to get to our destination.  He replied, "I'm sorry, but you're on the wrong train."  Great!  At the next stop all three of us hopped off the train so we wouldn't get ticketed for being on the wrong train.

Off of the train, we quickly realized that we were in the middle of nowhere, and I'm not lying.  There was a black man, a crazy, greasy haired woman who was also lost, and a chicken at the train stop we were at.  The black man luckily spoke English and we asked him if he knew how to get to our destination.  He had no clue.  A train was scheduled to stop at the stop we were at in ten minutes.  All three of us ran across the tracks to a tabacchi shop to buy our train tickets.  We then ran back and to our dismay, the train never arrived.  Two more trains were scheduled to stop and never did.  In the end we lied on a train platform in the sun for two hours waiting on a train.

When our train finally arrived, we hopped on and headed back for Rome.  When we got back, the was no time to get to the Pope's blessing so we headed home.  I guess I will never forget this trip for the rest of my life.  The link below is to a Facebook album of photos from the day.  They are pretty good.

Our Crazy Trip to See the Pope

Weekend in Cinque Terre

This past weekend, including Friday, was the second of our 3-day weekends of my summer semester.  I along with my classmates, Aaron N., Aaron R., Trent, Kyle, Caleb, Nick, Travis, and Garret, all decided we would make a trek to the five cities known as Cinque Terre.  We gave the weekend a name, "The Bro Weekend".  A well-suited name if I do say so myself.

We left for the city of Riomaggiore at 9:46 am on Friday morning.  The train ride took a little over 5 hours to reach the final destination.  On the ride there, I shared a train cabin with a couple from Oregon.  Both of them talked my leg off the entire time.  I eventually had to ignore their conversation so I could catch a little shuteye.  They were interesting though.  Their daughter has an internship in Rome.

When we finally arrived in Riomaggiore, the first order of business was to find food.  We found a pizza place that was just down the street from our hostel.  It was called Il Bomber Pizza.  The pizza was huge and absolutely delicious.  We checked into our hostel, threw on our swim suits and headed for the beach.

We took yet another train to the city of Monterosso.  Monterosso is the furthest of all of the cities in Cinque Terre.  It is also the only city that has sand beaches.  On the train ride we caught glimpses of the ocean and its cliffs through small holes cut into the mountain, that's right, the majority of the train ride was through a mountain.  Everyone was like a kid in a candy shop looking out the windows!

In Monterosso, we jumped off the train and ran for the beach.  The beach was no too full and we snagged a couple of beach chairs.  The waves in the water were very powerful.  On my way into the water, a wave knocked me down and threw me around like a rag doll.  It was actually pretty fun!  Aaron Nihart and I ended up making a game out of getting hit by waves.  The goal was to stay sitting the longest.  It was very difficult to win!

We spent the rest of our night in Monterosso sitting on a sea wall.  A live band was performing directly behind where we sat.  It was a Rolling Stones impersonation band.  It was hilarious because they would talk to the crowd in Italian, and then begin to sing perfect English for the songs!  At 11:45 we finally caught the train back to Riomaggiore.  We were all exhausted and quickly fell asleep.

The next day we awoke at an early hour.  The plan for the day was to hike a trail that connects all 5 cities of Cinque Terre.  The first leg of the trail was a perfectly flat stretch that skirted along the edge of the mountain above the waves of the Mediterranean Ocean.  The rest of the trail was not the same.  What was once flat and easy hiking turned into a 2 foot wide path that literally went vertical for many portions.  I thought I was going to break my ankle several times.  I along with a couple of other guys said to heck with finishing the trail and hopped on a train to go to the beach.  The rest of the guys finished the hike. They looked exhausted when they finally reached the beach.

That night, everyone went out for a nice supper.  I and several other guys were craving fresh seafood.  Riomaggiore delivered.  I had a seafood salad that contained octopus, squid, prawns, crab, swordfish, and several other things that I couldn't identify.  My main dish was a fillet of swordfish with grilled eggplant.  I of course had to finish with a cheesecake.  I definitely felt like a fatty at the end of that meal.

After supper we all went to relax on the rocks next to the ocean.  The cool breeze that came off of the Mediterranean was a great relief from the heat that we have become accustomed to in Rome.  Nearby and party was going on.  A large foam machine was blowing foam onto the crowd.  On our way back the hostel, you could see a trail of foam leading up the road.

The final day in Cinque Terre, we woke up and immediately headed for the ocean to take in its beauty one last time.  After about 2 hours we decided we should head out.  We once again grabbed some pizza from Il Bomber and began our short trek to the train station.  We all got on our train and headed for Rome.  I didn't want to leave Cinque Terre.  It was such a great relief to get out of the big city of Rome and back into a small town like I'm used to.  I will definitely make another trip back some time in my life.  I think you will see why!

 

One Heck of a Week Part 2

Well, it took a long time, but I am finally completing the second part of this post.  I will begin with my early rise to head for the airport.  Actually it was a late rise.  I had planned on waking up at 5 to make my way to the airport.  At 6:30 I woke up, freaked out and grabbed my stuff to run out the door!  I ran to the nearest taxi station and somehow told the driver where I needed to go.  He sensed my urgency and hightailed it towards the Ciampino Airport.  The ride to Ciampino is set at a set rate of 30 Euros.  He however only charged me 26 Euro.  That helped my day get a little better!  I flew Ryanair out of Rome.  Now if you have never heard of Ryanair, you have never heard of the cheapest airline in the world.  Don't get me wrong, the planes this airline flies are all basically brand new, but everything about the inside of the planes is dirt cheap.  The seats don't recline, legroom is nonexistent, you have to walk to the plane, and the flight attendants are always on the speaker trying to sell you stuff.  Oh well, it got me to Spain, my final destination.

When I arrived in Valencia, Spain, 2 hours late might I add, my friend Lauren Briggie greeted me as I came out of the airport terminal.  She was a little worried that I was never going to arrive.  We jumped on the subway and headed for downtown.  The first order of business was to find me a hostel to stay in for that night.  The hostel I booked was called the Purple Nest.  It was quite a crazy hostel.  A group of Australians had just arrived the night I arrived.  They were going nuts in the basement of the hostel.  Two guys were gone and running around in their underwear.  A live band was playing very loudly and needless to say, I didn't sleep very much that night.

When I woke up in the morning, I had a creepy 50 something year-old man looking at me from the bed below me.  I put on my clothes and got the heck out of there.  Lauren and I hoped on the subway again and headed to the ocean to release a rehabilitated turtle back into the Mediterranean Ocean.  It was pretty neat to see the thing flop its way into the water and then disappear beneath the waves.  By the time we had finished the release, it was past noon.  Lauren and I met up with her classmate and we headed towards the beach to eat.  Paella was on the menu.  We got a seafood paella and a Mediterranean paella.  Both were a delicious meal.  We then made a visit to the City of Arts and Sciences.  The architecture of this area was ridiculous.  It appeared as if I was walking through the future.

My next order of business was to find a new hostel.  I was hoping I could stay with Lauren host mother, so we headed to her apartment.  The woman appeared nice as could be when I first met her.  That changed very rapidly when Lauren asked if I could stay.  She was fine with it, but then changed her mind and started asking me to pay for the room.  I was fine with it, but it very rapidly escalated downwards.  She began freaking out and then started to ask me to leave her apartment.  I couldn't understand anything the woman was saying, so I just looked at her, nodded, and smiled.  In the end, I got the heck out of there and found a new hostel.

The following day was an another early rise.  Lauren, her room mate and I all headed our for a day at the beach.  The beaches in Spain are much different than the beaches in Italy.  First off, the topless women are much hotter and there are more of them!  I could go on, but I won't.  The beaches are also less crowded.  We spent basically the whole day swimming and laying out.  It was great to just relax.  The only complaint I had from the beach was that I forgot to put sunscreen on the backs of my knees.  Lets just say they were a bit toasty!

That night Lauren and I went out to check out the city of Valencia.  We decided we were going to eat at several tapas bars.  Tapas bars are little places where they serve h'orderves.  Spanish people eat these tapas before they go out to actually eat.  The first place we went was great.  The second place was one of the scariest dining moments of my life.  First, the waiters at the bar were Chinese and spoke no English and limited Spanish.  Second, everything in the bar was seafood.  Lastly, they recommended stuff we didn't recognize.  We both survived the experience, but I never want to do that again!

The following day, Lauren met me outside of my hostel to take me to the airport.  She put me on the correct subway and off I went.  In the airport, I was able to talk to an American family from Vermont.  It was nice to hear their own stories of scary dining experiences.  I got on the plane and made my way back to Rome.  It was nice to finally be back "home".  This concluded one heck of a week!

Here's Some More Photos

Here is the new Facebook photo album.  The other one has been filled.

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2205945872679.2132570.1368380983&l=529a68ee7c

One Heck of a Week Part 1

As you can tell from the title of this post, a lot has happened since I last posted on here.  I'm not gonna waste any time, so I'm gonna dive right on in.  On Monday my class and I all woke up and made our way to the Pyramid Train station.  This train station is very unique.  It is literally nestled between an ancient pyramid and a castle.  This is something that I never thought could exist, but it does!  Not to ramble on, we finally found our professor at the meeting point; however, the bus was not easily located.  My professor was on the phone with the driver, who only spoke Italian, for several minutes.  We thought we found the bus parked several blocks away, so I pulled out my camera and zoomed in to see if it was the correct bus.  It was so we made our way across the road to load up.  We finally left Rome about 15 minutes late and headed for the town of Bomarzo.

We arrived at our location in Bomarzo, the Parco dei Mostri.  This translates as the Park of Monsters.  The park was originally designed by a man whose lover had died.  As a tribute to her, he used the stone of the surrounding terrain to carve odd sculptures.  These included a mouth to Hell, a ravenous dolphin, a turtle, a leaning house, and battling figures.  We spent several hours in the Parco dei Mostri sketching and figuring out what makes it a successful park.  My professor gave us a lecture inside of the Mouth of Hell.  He later admitted that this was one of the coolest places he had ever lectured a class.  I would have to agree!  The heat was beginning to get to all of us in the park, so we finished up our activities and hit the road again.

Just before dark, our bus pulled into the farm that we would spend the next few nights.  This was a very unique farm to say the least.  Several guest houses were situated around the property.  The owners of this farm must have been very wealthy.  Each house appeared to have been recently remodeled, there was a large swimming pool, the main house was huge with an entire restaurant inside, and several hundred acres surrounded everything.  The farm produces olive oil, fruits and vegetables, and hosts agrotourism tours.  Every day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, the farm served all of us food that had been produced on the farm or very close by.  Each of these meals was several courses in size and VERY filling.  I felt as if I gained several pounds during our stay there.

A slight mix up occurred the following morning, therefore we had nothing scheduled until late in the afternoon.  I and all of my classmates took advantage of the situation and went to spend time at the pool.  It was great to be able to cool off in the pool when it was so hot outside.  The fun had to come to an end, so we finally left for our excursion to the cities of Sardinia and Viterbo.  Sardinia is home to several historic churches and gorgeous landscapes.  Viterbo was mainly a stop to explore a mountain top city.  In Viterbo we grabbed a bite to eat and wandered around the city.  After it got dark, we headed back to the farm.  It was two people's Birthdays, so we headed back out to the pool for a midnight dip.  My professor brought out his guitar and we all sang while he played along.  It is so much fun to have his guitar along.

The following day, we loaded up the van early in the morning.  Bagnaia was the destination on this day.  Bagnaia is home to the Villa Lante`.  Villa Lante` is a garden villa that we had learned about in our landscape history class.  It is an amazing design that is based around the idea of the taming of nature into the manicured gardens of earlier times.  This is accomplished through the use of an elaborate fountain system that links the entire garden together from the top to the bottom.  The top begins as a dense forest and then works its way down a hill into a parterre garden at the bottom.  The attached video shows a few of the fountains that are found in this garden.

After our visit to Villa Lante` we met back up with our bus driver at a nearby restaurant.  Now here is were a whole other story begins.  The bus driver was a man that I could tell was a little off his rocker when we first met up with him.  When we first found him on the first morning of the trip, he was looking the girls in my class up and down.  I didn't think much of it because that is the way most of the men are over here in Italy.  Well as time progressed, I could tell this man was trying to take us.  He was being provided housing for while on the trip.  That was a given.  He was also fed with us as well.  Well, back to where I left off at Bagnaia.  We come down the hill and arrived at the restaurant.  The bus driver is sitting at a table with several other tables reserved.  I was thinking, "Okay, he reserved tables for us so we can make our orders."  Well to my surprise and also my professor's, when we realized that the waiters were not bringing us menus, our food began to be delivered to our tables.  Appetizer, a bottle of wine for each table,  first course, second course, third course, and finally dessert!  What was supposed to be a meal of around 10 Euros per person, turned into a meal that was much more expensive.  I didn't appreciate the driver ordering an expensive meal for himself and everyone else.  I guess it's done now, so I can't complain because the meal was good and the school paid for it!  You can see from the faces of the girls in the photo, he was a creep.

We finally made it back to Rome later in the day.  I began to pack my clothes for my trip to Spain.  A fireworks show was supposed to take place somewhere in the city.  My roommates and I all went out to find a hill to watch the show.  The one place where another hill was, was where the fireworks were.  We could only see the tops of some of the larger explosions.  Oh well, I ended up getting some great photos of the Roman Forum while we were out and about.  I came back and went to bed so I could get up for my early flight to Spain in the morning.

More Photos

You can find more photos from my trip to Rome at this link.  Check them out!

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2077277176042.2127234.1368380983&l=8e16087895

Musei Vaticani

It's Sunday here in the city of Rome.  I have yet to have a single day off of school this week.  As I mentioned in earlier posts, this entire weekend was centered around the study of the Vatican City and its design.  On Saturday, we had a lecture at 10 in the morning.  It is always difficult to get my butt out of bed on the weekends.  I did it anyway, but I wasn't too happy about it.  Dr. Golden lectured about the interior of the Vatican Museum.  After the lecture, we were free for the day.  I took this opportunity to take a nap.  I didn't do much else.  Watched a movie and went for a walk to a hill overlooking the city of Rome.  This basically concluded this day.

Well here we are to the highlight of the week for myself, Sunday's visit to the Vatican Museum.  We met our professors at the horrible hour of 7:45 am.  We received our portable headsets to listen while in the museum.  The line for the museum was literally a mile in length.  Approximately 10,000 people pass through the museum each day.  While in line, our professor Dr. Golden had us all work our way through the line where people weren't standing.  I had a man yell at me, so I kept walking without acknowledging him.  Other people were yelling at us all as well, but I just kept following Dr. Golden.  She told us they should have filled in the holes in the line!  Anyway, we made it into the museum after an hours wait in line.  The Vatican museum is the most expensive collection of art in the world.  We took several hours working our way through the museum.  The pieces of art were all impeccably preserved.  Everything still looked pristine.  The end of the museum tour was the highlight and one of the most amazing experiences I have ever had.  We walked into the Sistine Chapel at the area where the votes are burned during conclave.  The ceiling painted by Michelangelo was everything I expected it to be.  It is very hard to appreciate this chapel without actually stepping foot in it.  Of course, my favorite part was the painting of God reaching out to touch Adam.  I can only imagine the turmoil Michelangelo went through to complete this masterpiece.  After what seemed like only ten minutes, Dr. Golden told us we had spent an hour in the chapel and it was time to leave.  I could have stayed for another two hours!

This coming week will be void of blog posts.  I will be spending this week in Viterbo, Italy with my class from Monday to Wednesday and then in Valencia, Spain with my friend Lauren Briggie for the remainder of the week.  I hope I have a heck of a story to tell when I return.  Until then, ciao!