My Favorite Sky in The World

Last weekend was our first tour of Rome. It was sooooo great to return to the city in which I first fell in love with Italy. The weather was beautiful, the people and sights and food are always beautiful. I stayed with the wonderful Giuseppe, Carlo, and Francesco (i miei amori) the first night, and then in a hostel near Termini. We did the Vatican the first day, the Colosseum the second day, and the Trevi/Piazza di Spagna/Pantheon the second night. It was amazing being able to share something I love so much with 20 new people who had never seen it before. I slept way too little to be awake as much as possible, but it was worth it.  My favorite part of the weekend was being reminded of my favorite sight in Rome - the sky above the Colosseum. I don't mean the Colosseum wth the sky in the background, but the sky with the Colosseum in the front. I have never seen a sky as blue as this in my life - and every time I go back when there is a sunny day it strikes me and I am left breathless. It is always the same, brilliant blue with no clouds and is absolutely my favorite sky in the world.

First Tour...Success! (i.e. Venetians are not always jerks if you show interest)

Free Hugs near the Ferrovia

This weekend I met Andy in Venice and we lead the first ever Weekend Student Adventures' Venice tour! We began Thursday night with three, by Friday morning had five, and by Friday night, nine. Eight girls and one guy - all wonderful and super fun. We had a great weekend - strolled through the Rialto, San Marco, and Palazzo Ducale, caught a vaporetto to the exterior islands and watched glass blowing in Murano, and ate delicious pizza and a three-course dinner (side note - finding a decent restaurant that does not serve overcooked, precooked, sick nasty food has been the most difficult task in planning a tour in Venice because of its extreme tourism). However,

Rialto from the gondola at sunset

the most pleasantly surprising part was the Venetians themselves.  Venice is known for its rude and cold inhabitants, quick to point you in the exact wrong direction and make fun of your accent. However, I was greeted by the contrary. Example 1 Oeople were giving out free hugs next to the Ferrovia (main train station). Example 2: Galleria San Marco. We went to the elegant glass shop Galleria San Marco to watch a glass-blowing demonstration. The visiting of a Murano glass Gallery is known as an expensive, prestigious endeavor, often reserved for those interested in spending hundreds or thousands of Euro on hand-blown Murano products. We were bring students, however, who were hard-pressed to spend five Euro. After visiting the gallery, I began speaking to the portiere about how I noticed the differences in his dialect and Italian and how I was interested in the Venetians as a people and as a culture and as a history. We talked for over an hour, and finished our discussion with him giving me his number and inviting me to call him any time I came to Venice and he'd personally take me to show me the "real Venice" and exterior islands.  Example 3: That night we went for a gondola ride - I chatted with the gondoliere in Italian, pulling out random Venetian dialect words, about his life and the history of Venice and the ride ended with the same - him telling me to return and call him whenever I would like so that he could take me and any friends on a gondola ride. Example 4: I went early to the restaurant where we were having dinner in order to finalize arrangements and ended up listening to the proprietor's stories about his jobs, his obsession with white bedsheets, and his garden. Andy joined us part-way through and we finished the night with free coffee, two free bottles of wine, one free caraffe of spritz, and a free contorno. My point is not that you should be nice to people because you get free stuff, but that if you show interest in people and who they are what makes them them (family, culture, and language/dialect), they show interest in you. Take the time to learn a language and a culture and the world becomes so much nicer and so much more piacevole :) C'e' un'opportunita' che ti aspetta - ciappa!!

Paris, the City of People Watchers

Last week I visited one of my closest friends from Tampa who is living in Paris for a few months. It was a great visit - she worked during the Thursday and Friday that I was there while I walked the city and sight-saw, and during the night we went for delicious French dinners of fresh baguettes, duck, desserts and wine. The first night we saw the Eiffel Tower in all of its hourly sparkliness, and the second night we witnessed the moon hanging gently over the Louvre. Paris was beautiful, and lives up to the hype. However, it wasn't the Eiffel Tower or Notre Dame Cathedral or the Mona Lisa that struck me the most about the city. The most striking and most "French" part of the Parisian scene were the cafe's that were on every corner. I knew going to the city that the French enjoyed their coffee and/or wine breaks and I'd heard stories of hourly chats in Parisian cafe's over a carafe of  wine or a cafe au lait, but I had never imagined that the people doing the chatting might not be facing each other. In fact, all of the cafes had tables and chairs squished together as close as possible, some with the chair around the table like what I'm used to, but most chairs facing out into the street instead of towards the other occupants of the table. The French, or at least those in Paris, are the ultimate people watchers, and they are not ashamed! As one sips their beverage of choice, they don't even have to turn their head to see the action and to comment on any and every passerby. I found it amazing that they have taken this very common and very human of activities that is usually done in secret, or at least with some discretion, and have placed it out in the open for all to enjoy. I wonder if this is why the French are considered more snobby than most other nationalities; it isn't that they are more judgmental, it's just that they don't hide it!

Vicenza and Ai Nani

This past Friday I visited Vicenza and some of the surrounding regions.  We first went to a theater from the 1500s completely in Greek style, designed by Andrea Palladio, one of Venice's most renowned architects. The theater was designed to created to resemble Thebes with the seven roads of Thebes and a point of view illusion behind the stage made completely of wood. They still do plays there today.

     After going to the theater, we stopped at a villa called "Ai Nani" ("Villa of the Dwarfs"_  I have never seen anything like it. The villa in and of itself is beautiful, and it is surrounding by a wall with little statues of different professions on it. The weirdest thing, however, is that the statues are all of dwarfs. It looks like something out of "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" or "Lord of the Rings." You feel almost like you are the adventurer who has stumbled on something that seems normal, but a little off what you are used to as normal - the same sensation you get that Alice feels when reading Alice in Wonderland; the one where you realize that this is a reality other than yours. Legend has it that the owners of this village were little people, and they created an environment for their daughter, who was also a dwarf, in which she believed everyone was small. They had the statues built on the wall, their house help were all tiny, and their daughter never had exposre to the taller world. One day, inevitably, a tall and handsome man came riding by on his horse. She saw him, starting talking to him, and fell in love. She also realized that she was not like this man, and that her reality was false. In despair, she killed herself.  Whether or not this legend is true, I don't know, but it is sad and interesting at the same time, and this villa is truly l'unica (one of a kind).