Viareggio was a really, really fun day trip. We took the train on Sunday morning for about two hours to the coast with twenty or so people from school. Rob and I sat across from a really nice middle aged woman who was reading the bible, and Rob tried to start up a conversation in Italian with her that turned in to about an hour of chatting back and forth. She was Romanian and had just moved to Florence a few months ago but had granddaughters in Viareggio. It was difficult to communicate but she was really patient with us, and it helped that she didn't speak any English, so it was Italian or nothing. We got some really good practice and met someone really nice, so it worked out well. Once we arrived in Viareggio, we walked around and got the feel for the town, grabbed lunch at a stand on the corner with a really nice guy at the grill who discussed the differences (in Italian) between American and Italian hot dogs. They also let us sample porchetta, a tuscan tradition for carnevale, which is pork that is seasoned and roasted on a spit for a whole day and a whole night before it's sliced and placed on a bun and fed to happy people like me.
That afternoon the Carnival itself started. Almost everyone was dressed up, from ages one to ninety-nine, most in these strange fur suits meant to look like varying animals. Most families matched, it was cute but very strange. The women wore the same fur suits as the men, but theirs were cut off in to very short shorts, then they wore matching tights and fur legwarmers. Very interesting look. Also popular for teenagers was the soccer player look or girls in tutus. The real point of the carnival, however, is the floats. They make these gigantic floats, hundreds of feet high with hundreds of people riding on them, made entirely out of paper-mache. Complete with sound systems, moving parts, and wheels, they parade them for hours down the main street near the ocean. Most of them are politically satirical, so many were difficult for us to understand, but we did our best to guess. You can see all my pictures from Viareggio here, though I'll throw up the craziest of the floats, just so you get the idea. Notice that there are communist hammer and sickles in his eyes. So creepy. Also notice how huge it is in comparison to all the little people on it.
After Viareggio, the week was rather uneventful. Classes went fairly well...Italian is sometimes really great and sometimes really frustrating, as some days we can hardly write fast enough for all we're learning and other days we do the same thing in both classes and learn nothing new. I'm still loving my music history class, mostly because the professor is so passionate about music and about really getting to know composers for who they were and associating that with their music. It's been really inspirational, and I'm falling in love all over again with classical (well, actually late-Romantic) music. I finally had a successful voice lesson this past week, and I'm starting to see the merits of having a different approach. Even if I'm not learning a ton in the way of theory, I am learning to emote and to really put myself in the music, which is starting to pay off, though it took a few awkward weeks to get used to. I'm also getting comfortable with a huge amount of new repertoire, which makes me confident that I may, in fact, be ready for my senior recital. We'll see! My other class is the Writing Traveler, which hasn't turned out at all how I expected, but is actually pretty great. I had writer's block for about a month, which made it miserable, but last week I finally wrote three pieces I was pretty happy with, which was a great way to end a week.
This weekend started Thursday night, when Rob and I walked around town, did a little shopping, went out to dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, il Gatto e la Volpe, and then caught Frost/Nixon in English at the Odeon (which I liked, for the most part, but had some issues with the construction and character development). After, we came home and packed our backpacks and turned in early, as our train left Friday morning at ten to nine. Friday morning we woke up early, grabbed a bit of breakfast, and had a pretty relaxing three hour train ride through the countryside with a short transfer in Pisa to Riomaggiore, the first of the five Cinque Terre. If you haven't heard of it, Cinque Terre is a small section of the Ligurian coastline up in the North of Italy where it touches the mainland of Europe (on the American, not the Asian side). It's a series of five tiny coastal towns built on cliffs, and they're incredibly beautiful and full of charm. It's the off-season right now, so there was hardly anything open, but I actually think it was better that way. We got to see the natural beauty of the place without any of the crowds, though I'd love to go back and get a feel for each of the cities when they're full of life.
After getting off the train, we hiked up the hill and found our hotel, a little locanda right next to a church. It was all locked up, but there was a sign right next to the door listing phone numbers and saying you could call to be let in. That would have worked great, had either Rob or I had a phone (which, by the way, has been 95% relaxing, but 5% irritating, mostly because of situations like this). We waited about fifteen minutes, then decided to go to lunch just down the hill and come back later. One prosciutto pizza and an hour later, there was still noone there. We went back to the restaurant and tried to ask if we could use the phone, which was met with very little success. I did manage to convince him to call the number himself though and he let them know that we wanted in. Ten minutes later, a harried woman ran in, unlocked the door, gave us the key and indicated that it also opened the front door, and left as quickly as she'd came. Despite the very strange checking-in experience, the hotel was very clean and comfortable and worked out quite well for our stay. After getting unpacked, we decided to go wandering. We got a feel for Riomaggiore, then went down to the beginning of the #2 trail, which connects all five of the cities and walks right along the ocean. Unfortunately, only the path between Riomaggiore and Manarola, the next town over, was open...the rest was closed due to landslides. We bought a three-day park and train pass anyway and hiked our way over to Manarola to see what we could see. It was a gorgeous day, so we just did lots of hiking and sitting in the sun. We walked back from Manarola to Riomaggiore right around sunset on what's aptly named Via Dell'Amore, or Lover's Lane. I swear it was the most beautiful sunset I've ever seen. The colors couldn't have been more perfect, and the setting was incredibly beautiful. We were the only ones out as well, which made it all the more peaceful.
After sunset we hiked back to the hotel, changed, and went to the only other restaurant open in town, Il Grottino (because after that afternoon's telephone debaucle, there was no way I was going back to the first restaurant). It was a seafood restaurant and considering Cinque Terre is famous for its seafood and pesto, we decided to be adventurous and order the equivalent of Prawn Soup. Now, neither one of us has ever eaten prawns, but we figured it wouldn't be that hard. Boy were we wrong! Out came a clay pot full of broth and six whole prawns. We were completely stumped, but decided to put them on our plates, at least cut off the heads, and go scavenging for any meat we could find in the middle. It was definitely comical. The best part is that we have NO idea whether people were looking at us like we were crazy or not, but what can you do? Luckily, we also ordered a chestnut-flour pasta with pesto which was delicious, and neither of us was too terribly hungry, so it was more of an adventure than anything.
The next day we did lots more hiking and exploring. In the morning we headed up the mountain above Riomaggiore to a little church on the crest of the hill. At the top there was a visitor's center which was inconveniently closed but which during the tourist season rents out horses or mountain bikes to use on the upper trails. I think we may try to come back and do this, because it sounds really fun! Then, on the way down, we decided to try to take a different trail. In Cinque Terre, the trails are supposed to be marked with a red and white stripe and a number to indicate where to go, but the Italians are phenomenal at making this little white red and white stripe almost impossible to find. We had quite an expedition trying to get down the mountain this way, but it was great fun.
After the hike we took the afternoon to town-hop and get the feel for each individual "terra". We walked again to Manarola and decided it felt much like an extension of Riomaggiore with a few more boats. We then took a train to Vernazza, which my lovely friend Sarah had told me was her favorite, and I quickly saw why. The town has a main road with cute little shops that opens up on a really beautiful marina with a little church. The waves were crashing up over the dock and the sun was out, so we sat for a while and I wrote a while in my journal. On our way back to the train station, we were waylaid in a little shop selling gorgeous hand-painted pottery. We were tempted to buy the whole store, but instead came out with a few key pieces for ourselves and as gifts. When it came time to pay, I asked in Italian and the guy gave me a blank stare. For a moment I thought I'd said something totally wrong, but then he answered in a thick, Irish accent "I don't speak Italian yet, sorry." Turned out he had fallen in love with Eva, the woman who ran the shop, and had moved to Vernazza to be with her. Pretty cute story for Valentine's day. He wrapped up all our stuff and we headed out to catch the train. We were about ten minutes too late though, so we had an hour to kill before the next train. We decided to wander the city, which was actually a really great decision. The coolest thing about Vernazza is that it's built entirely on a hill, so it seems much smaller than it actually is. Once you walk up what seems to be a tiny footpath, you find a whole network of 'streets' just wide enough for one person to walk on. At the top is a castle and a gorgeous little piazza on a cliff with a bench overlooking the ocean. It was gorgeous.
After Vernazza we took the train to Corniglia, the only one of the towns that's actually on the hill above the train station. We hiked up, got a delicious panino in a bar, and then climbed a tower and sat for an hour. Rob sketched the coastline, and I read Harry Potter. We hiked back down to the train station with just enough time to catch the train back to Riomaggiore. We left Monterrosso for last, because we had plans to go to a restaurant Peter reccommended for Valentine's Day dinner there. After getting cleaned up and hopping the train back to Monterrosso, we hiked over to the restaurant and settled in for a delicious meal. We had tons more pesto - pesto linguini and a pesto minestrone soup, and then shared house wine and a steak. It was delicious!
The next morning we got up early and headed home, since we wanted to be back in time to do some homework and get lots of sleep before starting the week. We took the train to Pisa and intended to switch trains and get back to Florence, but at the last minute, we decided to get out and go see the leaning tower, since it was such a beautiful day. After about a thirty minute walk across the city (which I really enjoyed!), we ended up at the tower. First of all, let me tell you that all sorts of people have told me that (a) there is nothing good in Pisa but the tower, and (b) it's not even really worth seeing, but I feel that neither one is true. Maybe it's because it was such a beautiful day, maybe it's because it was Sunday morning and everyone was out strolling, but I really liked Pisa, maybe even more so than Florence. First of all, it was quite a bit warmer than Florence. The streets were a little wider, it was a little bit smaller, and the entire center of the city is all for foot traffic, just like Florence. It was basically a more laid-back, smaller version of Florence, with a little bit less to see in terms of culture. For living though, it would have been nice. I think I'm realizing that I just like a little bit slower pace of life, and I'm not much of a city girl. It doesn't make me any less happy to be in Florence, and it doesn't mean I'll never live right in the middle of a city again, but I do think it's an interesting thing to learn about myself.
As for the tower, it was everything we expected. Actually, more than I had expected. It really is crazy how far it leans! They also still let people climb it, which seems totally crazy to me. Must be more solid than it looks. I can't imagine how sad it would be and how much of a mess it would be if it fell. It'd be an epic story though. It's funny to see how many people were there, especially considering how cozy and free of tourists the rest of the city felt. Walking in to that piazza was like stumbling on a sea of tourists...very surreal. It's also funny because everyone is taking the traditional 'look, I'm holding up the tower!' picture. I thought we were going to look goofy, and of course we did, but so did everyone else. We took a lot of really fun pictures, especially Rob, since I wasn't wearing great shoes for being up on the pillars. Here are my favorites of the bunch:
I also took a picture in front of the least visited museum in Italy, the national museum right next to the tower. Rob's mom sent me a news article on the musem, and so I meant to go in and visit it just to say I'd been there, but we didn't have time, so it still remains the least visited museum in Italy, no thanks to me.
After that I looked at my watch and realized we had about twenty minutes to get back to catch the train or we'd have to wait another hour. Though it'd taken a half hour to get there, I thought if we hurried we could make it. This was not the most brilliant of decisions considering I was (a) wearing knee-high leather boots with heels, (b) still sore from the weekend's gallavanting in Cinque Terre, and (c) we were still carrying everything we brought with us, but we did it anyway. We made it back to the train station limping but with two minutes to spare and ran to our platform. When we got there, there was no train. Thinking we'd missed it, we checked the board and realized it'd been cancelled. Thus, we got a really great workout, but we had to wait an hour anyway for the train. Ridiculous, but it made for a really good story.
So, you're pretty much caught up on life as I know it in Florence. Last night was positively frigid, so it's a little chilly still in the pensione. Everyone is complaining about the food and not getting enough, but I'm fairly content. I haven't had much of an appetite lately though, so I'm not sure if I'm really a fair judge. It's not fabulous food by any stretch, but it's much better than the COG, so I'm not complaining.
Next week is midterms, so I'm trying to get as much studying done this week as I can, since we'll be in Venice for carnevale this weekend. I'm excited! The weekend after midterms Rob and I are going with a tour group based out of Florence to Prague, which I am so excited to see as well. My roommate Meredith and our friend Leanna may come as well, we'll see. Then the next weekend, I'm going to Vienna! It will be a musical pilgrimage, I can't wait. I'm going to see the Marriage of Figaro (one of Mozart's most famous operas) in the first theater it ever played in! Then the next week is spring break, which Rob and I are spending in Germany. It's going to be a very busy month, but I can't wait!
P.S. If you'd like to see the rest of the pictures from Cinque Terre, you can catch the whole album here.
Ahhh I'm glad you liked Vernazza (and Cinque Terre in general)!! Sounds like you had a beautiful Valentine's Day - and the story of the Irish guy made me go "awwww."
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of your musical pilgrimage! Fantastic - can't wait to hear about it. Also, the late-Romantic period is my all-time fave.