SIENA

September 28, 2008

I spent the past 4 days of my "long" weekend in Lucca, arriving Wednesday and leaving Sunday On Thursday I took a day trip to Siena, a beautiful, traditional Tuscan city and home the the famous Il Palio horse race. Siena is much closer to Lucca (both are in the Toscana region), so I figured it would be easier to get to from there rather than all the way from Padova. The city is full of history, but since most of the main sights are located in the historic city center (which is actually another UNESCO World Heritage Site) it's easy to see them in a few hours.

I actually spent more time on the trains there and back than I did in Siena! The train wasn't too bad; it was only 2 1/2 hours, but I had to switch trains twice and take three different ones! I spent about 4 hours in the city, which I think was just enough, but 5 on stupid trains! I was pretty tired heading out that morning, and got started on the wrong foot when I tried to use the automated ticket machine at the Lucca train station. I was in a hurry so I didn't read the sign on it saying that it couldn't give change for €20, and didn't realize I was missing money til I had gotten on the train. I was able to get off before it left, but when I went back to look at the machine, I realized you're supposed to get a receipt and a ticket, then you have to wait in line so a cashier can give you your change (so much for the machine being a faster alternative to waiting for a cashier!). So I waited in line for a good 20 minutes, and when I got to the window the man rudely asked me if I had the receipt, and when I told him the machine didn't give me one, he gave me a look like he didn't believe me and started filling out a form. Apparently when they open up the machine and find my receipt, they'll send me my €12....Ha!

On the way there I kept nodding off to sleep and then jerking awake again, afraid that I had slept through my stop, so there were no refreshing naps for me : ( When I finally got to Siena, I managed to find a bus going toward centro and got off at a random stop close to a a pretty church called Santo Domenico with a huge bronze horse statue in front. Right next to the church I was treated to a perfect view point of the Sienese rooftops where I took some of my first lovely photos of the day! The main sights I wanted to see were Piazza del Campo and the Duomo, and I could see the latter in the distance, but it took me a good half hour to find my way there. The city was crowded with tour groups, especially German ones, so I just followed one until I found signs to direct me toward the center : ) Siena is made of really steep hills, too, so even though you can definitely get from one place to another on foot, you have to endure some intense inclines.

My first stop was the town square Piazza del Campo, known simply as Il Campo to locals, and host to the famous Il Palio. Perhaps what Siena is most known for, Il Palio is a traditional medieval horse race run around the Piazza del Campo twice each year. Seventeen contrade (city neighborhoods) vie for the trophy: a painted flag, or Palio, bearing an image of the Virgin Mary. All around the city year-round, you'll see the various flags of the contrade hanging from windows or on souvenirs in tourist shops.

The shell-shaped piazza also houses the vast brick Palazzo Pubblico and the sky-high Torre del Mangia. The piazza was filled with people, just sitting on the ground enjoying lunch or a conversation. I'd been told that climbing the tower was an absolute must, that the views of Siena and the surrounding Tuscan countryside were well worth the neverending, claustraphobia-inducing stairs to the top, and it was all right on! I consider myself a relatively small person, and even I was touching both sides of the wall at several spots on the stairs and ducking to get under the ridiculously low ceiling.

But, oh, the views! If those were the only things I saw in Siena, I would not be disappointed. I won't try to explain them in words, I would only make them sound less spectacular than they really are, but I hope my pics give you some idea of what I was lucky enough to see that day. Even seeing the sunray design of the piazza from above was awesome. As I was climbing up, the sky got a little cloudy though and the wind had picked up, and at that height it was especially strong... And with surprisingly little saftey guards at the top, I have to admit I was a tiny bit scared : ) To give you an idea of how high up I was, if you can see the bell at the top of the tower in the pics, I was close enough to touch it!

Next I headed to Siena's romanesque cathedral, or Duomo. I first spotted the unique black-and-white striped cathedral tower and was pretty impressed, until I rounded the corner and saw the unbelievably ornate façade, with subtle touches of pink and golden frescoes, leaving me speechless. Seriously, I probably could have just stood there and stared for a good hour. But alas, I was running out of time before I had to catch a train back, so I headed inside, where the black-and-white theme continued on the myriad columns lining the aisles of the cathedral. My favorite part, however, was the ceiling, colored sky-blue and studded with stars! Another impressive standout was the marble floor, with incrediblely detailed pictures and designs inlaid with various colored marble. And of course there was a beautiful stained glass and paintings by famous Italian artists, too. Inside the cathdral there is also a Baptistry and the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, but since there was an aditional fee for both and I didn't have that much time, I stuck to the cathedral which had plenty to see on it's own. Also, across from the Duomo is the Spedale Santa Maria della Scala, the huge former hospital that now houses a museum.

On a somewhat funny note, I documented with photos the various times saw the damn lupa, or she-wolf, around Siena. There was even a she-wolf water fountain! Thoroughly exhausted, I hopped on a bus back to the station and caught a train back to Lucca, having enjoyed a great day in beautiful Siena!

I won't say too much about my time in Lucca since there really isn't a lot to say anyway. Some highlights included: booking my flight to Dublin with Gabi for next month! (although not without more troubles from Ryanair, read: double booking), finding these great boots on sale, eating amazing food again, watching the Sex & the City movie which Lia got in London, and Tequila of course. Lucca was surprisingly cold though, so when Tequila slept with me, she actually crawled all the way under the blankets and stayed there the whole night! She also has a new ball that bounces, so it was pretty fun making it ricochet off things and watch her chase it. Then on Sunday, I even got to help give her a bath! She was so cute all wet and soapy : ) Carly also came Friday evening til Sunday and I think she enjoyed it. We didn't get a chance to go into Lucca, but I'm sure there will be a next time. As for now, I'm attempting to figure out a class schedule since classes start tomorrow (!!!), but am only becoming more and more frustrated. Hmph.
On a final note, rush was this past week back at UCSB, and Saturday was Bid Day, which means we have new baby Gamma Phis! I was surprised by how sad I was to be missing all of it, though. I guess I have a love/hate relationship with rush. I can't wait to meet the new pledge class, but in the meantime Facebook stalking will have to suffice! Congrats on rush G Phi!!

xxxx

IKEA Adventures, and then Some

September 24, 2008

Ciao from Lucca! Since ILP is over and university doesn't start til Monday, we have a 4-day weekend, which I decided to spend at home (read: Lucca). Thursday I'm going to do a day trip to Siena since it's closer to Lucca than to Padova, and then Friday evening Carly is coming to visit til Sunday, so it should be a nice time : )

My oral final for ILP Monday actually wasn't too bad. She basically just asked me some questions about my weekend, our visit to the Palazzo del Bo', and had me tell her about something culturally significant in Padova. It was more like a conversation than an interrogation, so that was a relief. The grammar part of it was a complete joke though. You pulled a scrap of paper from a jar which had two grammar fill-in-the-blank questions. Mine were easy, but I accidentally conjugated one verb in the gerundio even though I meant to do it in the participio presente. Luckily I caught my mistake and fixed it, and I'm pretty sure she knew that I knew it, and it was just an error of overlooking. So now I just have to wait and see how my grade turns out. I should get at least a B I think, which is fine because I just really don't want to take that Italian Grammar and Culture class at the Study Center (it's required if you get a B- or lower in ILP).

Afterword Carly and I decided to try out the mensa in centro since we were already there. Some Italians had told us it was the "best" mensa, so we were eager to see if this was true. Unfortunately, it was pretty much the same as the others, and I ended up with pasta, as usual. After lunch we were going to just head home, but on the way we passed by a piercing and tattoo shop. Gabi and Justine had been wanting ear piercings for a while, and we had thought about doing them that afternoon, so I figured since I was already there, we might as well do them then. So I called them up and waited for them to meet me there while Carly just headed back. The shop was clean and professional, and the piercer was nice. Gabi wanted her second holes on her lobes done, and Justine wanted her tragus pierced. Since I don't really have anything left to pierce, it was fun to kind of "live through their experiences". Plus, I could give them some tips about jewelry, cleaning, etc. Actually it was a good thing I was there because he was going to use this huge ring for Justine, which was all wrong, it would have got caught on everything, so I had him use a much smaller hoop instead which both looked better and would also be safer and more practical. It was a fun experience though, and made me want to get something done myself. In fact, I'm thinking of gauging (making the hole bigger) one of my second holes when I get back to the States, because gauging is something I've never done!

After that I went home and took a much needed nap. I had been needing to go to IKEA and get some things for my room for a while, so Gabi, Justine, and I decided to make use of our free afternoon and evening and make a trip there. It's relatively easy to get to by bus, but you do have to walk along the freeway from the bus stop to get there. And let me tell you this IKEA is absolutely enormous! Thank goodness Gabi and Justine had been there before and knew where things were otherwise it would have taken us forever. I got some really good, cheap things, including: this amazing black and white spiral and polka dot patterned duvet cover, a turquoise sheet to go underneath and add a splash of color, these great decorative pillows to match the duvet (one black, one black w/ white polka dots), a black fleece blanket, more clothes hangers, a closet shelf organizer to give me more room in my tiny closet, a trio of linen scented candles, and a succulent little plant! So now that my room is finally "decorated" I can post pics of what it looks like! Overall I think I did very well at IKEA : )

view outside my window

And here the adventure ensued. We spent a lot more time at IKEA than we had anticipated, so it was pretty late and already dark out when we left. When we got to the bus stop, we checked the times for the bus we needed and were pleased to see it would be there in about 20 minutes. It was pretty cold out and none of us had eaten since lunch (it was like 8:30pm at that point) so we were pretty eager to get home. Finally we saw our bus, but as it approached our stop it wasn't slowing down, so we got up and waved our arms at it, only to see the driver of the empty bus shake his finger "no" at us as the bus passed us. Baffled, we guessed that maybe it was just out of service and another one would be covering it's route for it. So we waited a while longer, growing colder and hungrier. Then we saw another bus coming, but it was the wrong number, so we ignored it. And we waited some more. Growing impatient, Gabi checked the timetable again. It turns out we missed the fineprint associated with our bus' route at night....the bus we had ignored actually takes over the route of the bus we had been waiting for all that time! And the next one wasn't coming for another hour! We decide waiting until 10pm was not an option, so we called Maggie to get the number of a taxi and called them. Very surprisingly, it only took 5 minutes to get back to Copernico, despite the 20 minutes the bus takes! And it only ended up being about 3 euro each, which was not bad at all. On the way we even discovered that the son of our taxi driver was getting his master's at UCSB! He knew State St. and all these restaurants in SB...talk about a small world, right? We went straight to Tio Pepe's for dinner, then went back and set up our new IKEA purchases and ended the night with a movie.

bus stop photo shoot!

Tuesday was kind of lazy. I couldn't really do anything because I had my appointment with the gastroenterology specialist at 2pm, smack in the middle of the day. The appointment came with both good and bad news. The good news is that all my levels have gone down, most back to normal and a few super close to normal. The specialist said she doesn't recommend anything further except for a follow-up in 1-2 months. They determined the cause of the infection was something I ate, and also said they found a certain bacteria in my tests that should just go away on it's own, especially since I'm feeling totally fine. Now the bad news. I asked when I could start drinking alcohol again, and was simply told not yet, that the pancreas "is fragile and it would be dangerous". To me, this is the same as telling a kid not to touch the stove because it is hot, but not explaining that if they touch it it will burn them. It would be nice to know what would happen if my willpower gave in and I had a drink, what would happen. Would I die? Get sick again? But once again, I'm told nothing. And with Oktoberfest a week and a half away, I was more than a little upset with this news. It's frustrating because it's not that I have the desire to go out and get wasted, but I've paid close to $400 for this 4-day trip to a beer festival, where everyone is drinking beer, and everything there revolves around beer and yet I won't be able to drink? For a while I seriously considered not going because I didn't want to put myself in such a tempting position or have it rubbed in my face. But after some thought and a very helpful chat with my dad, I figure it would be a waste of money and I would regret not going. And I figure I'll be able to at least taste different beers and be fine, so right now that's the plan.
Wednesday morning we had our practical orientation, during which we thought they would help us choose classes at the university, when in actuality they showed us how to use various websites and weren't really that helpful at all. The Italian system is so different than anything in the States, too. You don't register or sign-up for a class; in fact the only way you get credit is by signing up for an exam appointment at the end of the semester. So I have to go onto all these different websites and try and find classes that don't sound ridiculously hard and that will also count as credit back home. I'm already taking an Art History class at the Study Center, so I just have to find one psych class and one "other", like literature, history, etc. The problem is that the psychology website has posted the classes being offered but no info about, when, where, what time, etc. so I have no idea how to plan my schedule. And like I said, EAP pretty much has left us on our own to figure all this out by Monday!
Anyway, after the orientation I packed and caught a train to Lucca at 2pm. The trip here wasn't bad at all actually. It's just as cold here as it was in Padova, and I'm now wishing I had brought warmer clothes to wear. In other exciting news, Gabi and I are going to Dublin! We booked our flights (only after having serious complications with stupid Ryanair AGAIN). But this means that I'm going to Germany, Spain, and Dublin all next month! So exciting : )
Tomorrow I'm going to Siena, a beautiful city in Tuscany and home to the famous horse race Il Palio. It should be fun, and I'll try and post about it soon after. Until then...

Molti baci!

xoxo