Firenze 2006-2007: November 2006

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Thanksgiving in Belgium and the Netherlands

This last week or so, we had a break for Thanksgiving so we got to spend some extra time traveling. We only had class on Monday and Tuesday, then the rest of the week was off so everyone took advantage of that and went to some places that are a bit hard to get to on regular weekends.
Monday night we had our Thanksgiving dinner in the villa. We all gathered in the student center and had a “family time” where everyone talked and then we prayed before digging into our traditional Thanksgiving meal. We had turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, and pretty much everything else you can think of. We even had pumpkin and pecan pies for desert! It made such nice change to be able to eat American style food and not have pasta for a meal.
I spent most of Tuesday getting ready to leave as we had to catch a flight out of Pisa at 9, which meant we had to leave Florence at about 6. I got everything done, barely, and then Kelly, Myles, and me headed out. We made our train fine, although the walk to the station in the rain wasn’t fun. We made it to Pisa, and we were a bit nervous about our flight taking off as it had been raining and was supposed to throughout the night. We checked in, got some dinner and then got on the plane which took off without any trouble or delays. About an hour and a half later, we were in Charleroi, a town about an hour south of Brussels. After a bus into Brussels we searched for our hostel. We ended up in a taxi as it was 1am and we were exhausted. After that, we checked into the hostel and took a walk around the block to get our bearings before heading back to bed.
The next morning, we had a toast breakfast at the hostel and then headed to the North Station to get a train to Brugge. After getting a quick snack at the station we were on the hour or so train ride to the fairly small city of Brugge. We got there at about 11, and immediately walked through the park from the station to the center of town.

(The park between the station and center of Brugge)
Brugge is basically one main street with a bunch of side streets leading to different sights. We walked down the main street, looking at all the chocolate stores, souvenir shops, and other stores until we reached the church. We went inside, but were kicked out within five minutes as the church was closing for the lunch hour. We then headed to the main square where we walked around the city hall area and the tourist filled main square of the town. We got fries and waffles from a street vendor for lunch and then started wandering around the town a bit more. We headed back off the main square and found a fresh food market as well as some buildings with gorgeous facades.

(The main square in Brugge, they are setting up for a Christmas market in the center)

(The market off the main square)

(A view down one of Brugge's many canals)
We then headed back down other side streets to the main square and wandered off in the opposite direction with no real destination except to explore. We walked around most of the day, eventually finding another church, the one that holds Michelangelo’s Madonna and Child- one of his few works housed outside Italy. From there we tried to track down our hostel which we eventually succeeded in doing. From there we set out to find some dinner and decided on the Northern European fast food burger chain- Quick. We ate a burger and some more fries and then walked around the town a bit more to see the town by night. After walking around for a while, we headed back to the hostel and went to bed fairly early.

(The sheet music for playing nothing- from the concert where the composed got on stage and played nothing for 4+ minutes)

(Michelangelo's Madonna and Child)

(Another Canal in Brugge)
The next morning, Thanksgiving day, we got up pretty early, got our stuff together and headed for the station to catch a train to Amsterdam. We got a train to Antwerp Central, but saw that the trains for Amsterdam left from another station in Antwerp, so we headed to that station on another train. There we got lunch at a small supermarket in the station and waited for our train to Amsterdam. After finally getting on that train, it was only another two hours before we were in the city. It was mid-afternoon but it was starting to get dark, so we walked around a bit and then tried to decide what to do for our Thanksgiving dinner. We saw a sign for the Hard Rock Café and set out to find that, thinking that would be about as good as we could do in the Netherlands for Thanksgiving. We made it there and ate a relatively early dinner that consisted of a huge burger, fries, and free refills on soda. The restaurant was fairly crowded with Americans all eating together to celebrate the holiday. After stuffing ourselves, we headed to the hostel to drop off our stuff before heading out to wander the city a bit before bed. We found the hostel, although it did take a while and we were a bit confused on the directions we received along the way. We finally found it, dropped the luggage off and headed back out. We walked along the piazza with all the museums in the city (or so it seemed like) on it. We saw the Van Gogh and Rembrandt museums as well as the concert hall. From there we walked back towards the canals and the center of the city. We saw the cathedral and several other landmarks before heading towards the shopping district, the only place that seemed to be crowded. While walking along it, we saw the “coffee shops” that make Amsterdam famous and laughed at some of the ads and signs that we saw, which included bars that allowed marijuana, but nothing “harder or more dangerous.” The city was littered with random ads and signs like that, most of them seemed serious, but were funny to observe nonetheless. After walking for a while, we headed back to the hostel and went to bed.

(The main square in Amsterdam)

(A look down a street with the Red Light District in the distance)

(The Rembrandt museum as seen from the Museumsplein)

(The Conecert Hall from the Museumsplein)
We got up the next morning, had a hostel breakfast of toast and coffee and then made it to the Van Gogh museum as it was opening. We got in and saw the whole of the museum before it got very crowded at all. The museum holds most of his famous works including Wheatfield with Crows, the Potato Eaters, the Sunflowers, and the Bedroom in Arles. Apart from seeing those which was neat, we got to see about 200 other works by Van Gogh, most of which I’d never seen before, as well as several works by Monet and Manet. After spending several hours in the museum we headed to the Anne Frank house, but couldn’t go inside because of our luggage. From there we walked back to the center of town and looked around the churches in the center of the city before stumbling across a carry out Asian food place that smelled amazing so we decided to have a lunch that consisted of teriyaki chicken and noodles with a Dr. Pepper. The food was great, especially since I hadn’t had Asian food in several months. From there, we walked around the shopping center of the city wondering what we should do next. We walked around more and saw several more canals and sections of the city we hadn’t seen before.

(The canal infront of the Anne Frank house)
At about 3, I headed back to the train station to get a train back to Brussels to meet up with Alex and West. Myles and Kelly stayed in Amsterdam to meet Bobbie Jo and John, so for the train ride I was by myself. It was a 3 hour ride, and I slept for most of it. Alex and West met my train and from there we found our hostel and headed out in search of some dinner. We ended up eating waffles and fries which seemed to be the meal of choice for the trip. We then saw the Bourse, the Grand Palace, and the Mannikin Pis statue before finding a bar and trying several Belgian beers. The most unique one we tried was probably the chocolate beer, while the best was the berry beer, which didn’t taste like alcohol at all. We then headed back to the hostel, and played several games of pool there before going to bed. When we got up the next morning, we did the church tour of Brussels, seeing the Cathedral and St. Anne’s before heading back to the Grand Palace and a Tex-Mex restaurant named Chi Chi’s that we’d seen the day before. We ate an early lunch there, which turned out to be amazing, mostly because we had not had Mexican food of any kind in several months as well.

(The Mannekin Pis Statue)

(The Grand Palace)

(More of the Grand Palace)

(Alex, Me, and West in the Grand Palace)
After our lunch, we met Kelly and Myles in front of the Bourse and took them around the main sights in the area, as well as getting some lunch for them before setting off to see something else. We wandered around in the area of the central station, and thought about going to see the EU main building when we saw a sign that had the Guinness book of world records logo on it. We followed it and saw that it led to a bar named Delirium that got the record for most types of beer available at a single location. We went in and looked over their menu that looked like a text book before making a choice and getting the beer that they recommended to us- the beer the bar was named for- Delirium. We all tried different kinds of beer and after having a few each, we still had not even scratched the surface of what the bar offered. We left the bar and got a baguette dinner before looking for more waffles before heading to the station to pick up our bags and get on a train to Charleroi, the city where we would be spending the night. We got on the train, and an hour later we were in Charleroi. We then got a taxi to our hotel and went to bed very early as we would have to be up at 4:30am the next morning to catch our flight.

(Alex, Me, West, and Myles at Delirum)

(A shot of the bar at Delirum)
We all made it out of the hotel on time the next morning and made it to the airport with only a few minutes to spare for our flight. The flight went smooth enough and before we knew it we were in Pisa and on the train back to Florence. We made it back in time to eat at Café Liberta right before it closed for us, and then went to the villa and took a nice long nap followed by a shower and then I worked for the better part of the day, taking frequent breaks to stop and hear about people’s weekends as they trickled back in from all corners of Europe.
We started the last week of classes today, and I only have one more Italian and Religion class and two more Humanities classes not counting the finals before the semester is done.

Second Weekend in Florence

This weekend was my second to stay at home in Florence. Pretty much everyone in the house decided to stay in this weekend as it was the weekend before our long weekend for Thanksgiving, and as we had our Humanities term paper due on Monday.
The weekend started on Thursday night when 15 of us went out to dinner at Aqua al Due for Liz’s birthday. It was a good restaurant near the Bargello. Pretty much everyone had the assigi di prima, which was a sampler of five different pastas, each of which was amazing.
I woke up early on Friday morning and went to Café Liberta, ate and then headed back to the library. After several hours of work, I was done with the paper, so I went back to the room and was showered before my roommates got up. I took a short nap because I really did wake up too early, and when I got up, I went out to get lunch with Alex and West. We got Kebabs and then went to the train station to try and get Interrail passes- Eurail passes for Europeans. We failed in the endeavor, so Alex and West got Eurail passes, and then we headed back to the villa. I went for a run around Florence that afternoon and then came back to the villa to relax a bit before going out to dinner. About 15 of us went to Pizzeria Spera and got pizza to go, and we came back to the villa and watched Euro Trip on the wall in one of our classrooms after we turned the floor into one big pillow bed. After that we went out with some people from London who were in town visiting for the weekend.
I got up early again on Saturday, went to Café Liberta, and then headed to the train station to meet Fernando, another Londoner who was in Rome, but decided to come up and visit Florence for the day. I met him at the station, and took him home, going by several tourist sites. When we got back to the house, we woke up Alex and West and while they got ready, I gave Nando the tour of the villa. When everyone was ready, we headed off to the Leather Market to look around a bit on our way to the Uffizi. We finally made it to the Uffizi and started on the tour of the enormous museum. We saw all of the most famous works that it holds, including many by Botticelli, Giotto, Cimabue, Michelangelo, and others. The thing that made this trip to the Uffizi better than the other times that I’ve been was the fact that there was a special exhibit on Leonardo that featured some of his works that I’d never seen as well as a kind of insight into his thoughts and an explanation of his inventions. It was really neat, and after we spent a good several hours in the museum, we headed out and in the direction of Santa Croce. We stopped by a supermarket to get stuff for lunch, intending on having a picnic in the piazza, but it started to pour rain so we headed to the Ponte Vecchio as there is some cover there. We ate our picnic as it continued to pour. As most of the stuff we wanted to show Fernando involved walking we decided to head back home and relax for a bit before heading back out agian. We watched another movie on the wall and then went to Pizzeria Spera again as it is the best restaurant in Florence that is halfway cheap. We ate the pizza and then went to get gelato before having to take Fernando back to the station so he could get his train back to Rome.
It rained most of the day on Sunday, so I slept in, just made Café Liberta before it closed and then headed back to the villa to do some work. I worked for quite a while and then ventured out for some lunch and to run some errands. After that, I went on a run, but it started raining pretty hard a little while after I started, so I headed back. Before I knew it, it was dinner time so I ate and heard all about everyone else’s weekend as usual. After dinner, I went to the worship and then began to get ready for the long weekend that would start on Tuesday.

A shot from the Ponte Vecchio in the pouring rain.

Alex, Fernando and me in the villa after our day in Florence.

Sunday, November 12, 2006

Paris

This weekend, Katie Dolton and I went to Paris to see the city and visit Amanda, who is studying there this semester. We were supposed to meet up with Daniel Willis and Kate Warner from Heidelberg as well but never really found them, so for the most part, it was Katie and I touring Paris.
We left from Firenze Campo di Marte Thursday night right after big brother/ big sister and dinner. We made to the train in plenty of time, and at about 9pm, we were on our way. We had a couchette and after talking some and entertaining ourselves to the best of our ability with what we had, we went to bed. When we woke up we thought we were just 30 minutes outside of Paris, but the train was a little late, so we had to wait an extra hour or so to get there. We ended up getting there at about 10:30 and left Paris Bercy in search of our hotel. We took the Metro to Republique, had a crepe and then met up with Amanda before heading to the hotel. After dropping the bags off, we headed on the Metro to the area of the Palais de Justice and Notre Dame.

(The Seine River with the Eiffel Tower in the background)

(The facade of Notre Dame)

(The back of Notre Dame)

(John the Baptist being beheaded in Notre Dame)
We saw the church, walked around both the inside and outside taking in as much as we could of the stained glass, flying buttresses, and art that covers the church before heading down the Seine river in the direction of the Tulieres and the Louvre. We looked around the piazza of the Louvre and then headed through the garden in the direction of the Champs de Elysees and the Arc de Triomphe. We walked all down the Champs and looked at some of the stores before making it to the Arc walking around it and back down the other side of the Champs. From there, we headed back through the Tulieres, stopping for a crepe before going to the Louvre at 6pm, when it is free for students under 26.

(The entrance to the Louvre)

(Me infront of the Arc De Triomphe)

(The Eiffel Tower at sunset)

(The Champs de Elysees and Arc de Triomphe at sunset)
We headed straight for the wing of the museum with the Italian and Spanish paintings, the most notable one being the Mona Lisa. I was pretty surprised at how many of the paintings there I was able to identify from either European History or my Humanities class, and that made the museum pretty cool to walk through. I had no idea that there was so much Italian art there, Rafaello and Leonardo in particular. We saw the Mona Lisa, and all the other works there before heading to the Ancient Greek and Roman section to see the Venus di Milo, something we had just studied in Humanities. We then took a quick look around most of the rest of the rooms, but the other one that I really wanted to see, the room with Italian sculptures was closed so we looked around a bit more before leaving.

(The Mona Lisa, sorry for the crummy quality on the pic)

(Venus di Milo)

(Where Mary Magdaline is buried according to the Da Vinci Code, the Louvre)
After that, we took the Metro to the Eiffel Tower and arrived there just in time to see it start to sparkle with all the individual lights that go off every hour or so. We watched it for a while, from the long grassy expanse in front of the tower. After that we went back to the hotel and Katie went to bed, while I went to meet Amanda at Sac Le Coeur, the church overlooking Paris. We walked around that area for a while and then I too headed back to the hotel to go to bed.

(The Eiffel Tower sparkling)
When we woke up on Saturday, it was raining a bit, so we prepared for a wet day, but it turned out to be nice for the most part. First thing we headed back to Sac Le Coeur to see the view at day and to tour the church.

(Sac le Coeur)

(The invisible man, a random statue)
From there we walked a short way to the Moulin Rouge, took a picture of it and went to the area of Paris near the Gare de Lyon, where the Pepperdine students live and study. We walked around that neighborhood a bit and then headed to the Eiffel Tower again, hoping to go up to the top but the top floor was closed so we decided to head to the Gardens of Luxembourg.

(The Moulin Rouge)
We walked around the gardens and ate a picnic style late lunch there before heading towards the Pantheon, looking around there and then heading back to pick up our bags, some more stuff for a picnic dinner on the train and then we went back to Bercy to catch our train that left just after 7. In our couchette this time were three Italians who kept up a pretty interesting conversation about Paris, Florence, and then language. One of them was wondering why Italian children had to learn English instead of French and the others were talking about which languages are more articulate and easier to learn, and then also about usefulness. From there they talked about Paris, and it was then that I realized that it was 11/11, the day World War I ended, so although we didn’t really realize it until too late, we were in Paris on a pretty famous day for Europe. After eating and listening to the conversation for a while we went to bed and woke up at about 6:30, and got off the train in Florence shortly thereafter. We made a beeline to Café Liberta and breakfast, then back to the villa for a shower and now I’m here writing this e-mail and looking forward to homework for the rest of the day.

(Me infront of the Eiffel Tower)

(The garden infront of the Palace of Luxembourg)

(A memorial in Notre Dame to those from the English Empire who died in WWI)
More pics later.

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Roma

This weekend, a group of about 20 of us went to Rome. The six of us guys who went all spent the better part of the weekend, so we would be in a smaller, and more manageable group as opposed to a huge group attempting to see all of Rome in about two days.
We all left on the 6:45 train from Florence, arriving in Rome shortly after 10. From there, John, Josh, Conner, Steven, and I went off to our hostel just a few blocks away from the station where we met Brenden. We dropped off our bags and then headed off to find something to eat. We happened upon the Hard Rock Café, so we ate lunch there before getting started. It was really nice to have some real American style food, and to have drinks with ice and free refills. After lunch, we went to the Spanish Steps where we looked around for a while before heading to the river, seeing Castel San Angelo, the Vatican from a distance and other things in that area of the city. After that we headed to Piazza Navona to see the fountain representing the four great rivers of the world, it was under restoration which meant it was all covered in scaffolding which was a bummer, but we still got to look around the piazza. We then headed to the Pantheon where we looked around, I saw the inside of the Pantheon for the first time, including Vittorio Emmanuel’s tomb and others vital to the construction of the modern Italian nation. After that we went to the Trevi Fountain, threw our coin in, took all the pictures we wanted and then walked to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. We walked all over that piazza and the monument, walked to the top of the building for a great view, and then headed through the ruins of the Forum to the Colosseum. It was beginning to get dark, so we couldn’t spend that much time in the Forum. We made it to the Colosseum, ran into Liz and Anna, so we walked around with them some, eventually getting dinner at a place I remember eating at in 1997 near the Colosseum. After a pizza, we got crepes and headed back in the direction of the train station and our hostel. We walked over to the place the other were staying, hung out there for a bit and then went back to our own room to get to bed fairly early.
The plan for the next day was to get up really early and make it to the Vatican Museums before there was any kind of line that we’d have to wait in. That didn’t really happen for us. We all got up early but after showering, eating breakfast and just getting all our stuff together, it was about 9:30 by the time we finally reached the long, long line to get into the Vatican Museums. We found the girls waiting in line about a mile from the entrance, and they told us that they’d been there since 7:30. We finally got inside and Steven and I broke off from our huge group that was hard to manage once inside. Steven and I slowly made our way through the museums, seeing all the Ancient Egyptian and Greek statues and mummies in the case of Egypt. From there it changes to chapels that various Popes had designed throughout the centuries, halls with enormous tapestries, and then finally the sala di Rafaello, or the Room of Raphael. Here we saw his School of Athens which is one of the most famous pieces of art the Vatican owns. After taking that in, it was only a few more minutes until we were in the Sistine Chapel and angling our necks in weird positions in order to take in the whole of the ceiling. After snapping some pictures of the ceiling and Last Judgment we stood in awe of how that could have been done, and then moved on. After that, it was just the library that we walked through before exiting the museums and heading in the direction of St. Peter’s Basicilia. We made it there and at once found that there was something going on. Steven and I went in the church, saw Michelangelo’s Pieta right away, and then headed towards the center of the church where there seemed to be a lot of people trying to get a good look at something. We made our way up there and saw that everyone was trying to get a good look at the service going on. We think we saw the Pope presiding over a mass, but were not close enough to tell for sure.
After taking in the rest of St. Peter’s, we headed out to lunch and then back to the Spanish Steps/Trevi Fountain area to look around a bit more and see what we could find to occupy a few hours. We ended up finding a church that supposedly had the head of John the Baptist in it, so we took some pictures of that and headed back to one of the main pedestrian walkways with shops on it. We walked along it, ending at the Piazza del Popolo. At that point it was time for us to head back to the Trevi Fountain to meet the rest of the group for dinner. All twenty or so of us met and went to a trattoria not too far from the fountain for a birthday dinner for Natalie. We took up the whole of the back room and had a great time.
We all headed back in the direction of the train station after dinner and got tickets to return to Florence. We then had to get the subway out to Tiburtina and wait for our train to come. When it did, we noticed that it was extremely crowded, so when we finally managed to find seats, we were forced to share a compartment with an old man from Arezzo. He had been in Rome for the day to take part in the communist rally that we saw taking place near Termini station. We asked him about it, and he explained quite a bit to us before it came time for him to get off the train and head home. We slept the rest of the way and ended up getting back to the villa at like 3am.
On Sunday, I went to café liberta, but apart from that, it was a fairly uneventful day. It was mostly occupied with naps and homework, and greeting people home from their various travels.