I’ve written a lot about the trip, but I still have much more to write — I decided though instead of keeping it in a word document, I would just keep editing it in here so that you guys can finally read some stuff about the trip. I promise I’ll get pictures up here soon too! So, you can read what I have here, but check back because I’ll edit it and fill in the cities that I haven’t written about yet.

SUNDAY, JUNE 13^th

Today we got back from a long field trip up to a bunch of cities in Northern Italy. There’s a lot to talk about, so I guess I’ll talk about them in chronological order:

Florence:

Florence is best known as a Renaissance city, which is partially true and partially not. Florence is actually an ancient Roman city, established by merchants and soldiers that travelled north from Rome constantly. There were a lot of other settlements like this, but Florence was one of the more successful ones because its location in a valley situated near a river. Even after the fall of the Roman Empire, Florence continued to succeed on its own because the city was set up so richly in trade. I find it interesting because, unlike Rome, Florence never had a severe decline. During the Middle Ages, Rome decreased heavily in population – almost to the point of being uninhabited. This had a lot of consequences on the city of Rome, and the “gap” in architecture is actually visible in the city fabric. Since Florence never went through such a decline, that gap doesn’t exist there, so a more linear progression of architecture is seen through this city.

Florence peaked during the early Renaissance era, and it’s probably true that the Renaissance actually began in Florence. So many of the prominent artists and architects of the Renaissance came from Florence, and it’s clear that Florence architecture started to use Renaissance ideas before anybody else had. In terms of architecture, the most important person to come out of Florence during this time was Michelangelo, who did a lot of important works in Florence before moving to Rome as the main Renaissance influence shifted to Rome. After moving to Rome, Michelangelo did most of his famous works (The Sistine Chapel, for example).

The heart of Florence is situated in the area where the Renaissance architecture is most prominent, and that’s what makes it a Renaissance city, in a sense. However, the original layout of the ancient Roman city is still the main grid of the city, so it’s important to remember the influence from antiquity.

On my own time, I got to meet up with my friend Micky, who is studying abroad in Florence! She’s doing something very similar to me – studying abroad for 6 weeks. It was great to finally see her again. I brought a couple of my friends in my program, and we met up with her and a few others from hers. We hung out and went to a night club when they finally opened and danced for the rest of the night!

Verona:

Verona is supposedly the place where Romeo and Juliet takes place. It definitely lived up to the expectations that I inevitably placed when I heard that this was the place where the mots famous story took place. We got to explore this town for a good bit on our own, which was a lot of fun since we were all kind of itching to have some free time after the long field trip days in Florence. An awesome part of this town was the shopping that was there. I’d even say I liked it more than the shopping in Milan because I could actually afford the things in these stores haha. Anyway, a bunch of the guys went on a little shopping excursion, and we all got Italian jackets in one of the department stores. It was kind of fun goofing off and modeling for ourselves in the basement of this place. Another key hot-spot of this town was the statue of Juliet next to where her home supposedly was in the story. Apparently, if you rub her exposed breast, you will have good luck in love affairs. Also, on the walls leading up the statue were thousands of “love notes” to Romeo and Juliet. We only stayed here for one full day, but it was a great spot to relax a little bit and let loose on the North Trip.

Como:

Besides Cinque Terre, Lake Como is the most beautiful place in the world. I could see why all the celebrities like George Clooney all houses on the lake here. Everybody at home can see the beauty of Lake Como by watching Star Wars: Episode II. Lake Como is where George Lucas filmed Anakin and Padme’s marriage in the movie (The landscape was beautiful, even if that was easily the worst star wars movie made). In terms of architecture, we visited a few important buildings designed by the Italian architect Terragni, a much more modern architect than the material we’ve been studying this whole trip. It was relieving to finally learn about something other than a church or Roman temple. Terragni’s style was very simple and a lot of sense, while still being very unique in his own way. 

Milan:

It was rather unfortunate, but we were only able to spend 3 � hours in Milan. We woke up early in our hotel in Como, and got on a bus to head to Milan. After we got there, we toured for about an hour, where we were able to see the Milan Cathedral and a few other important buildings. We were given some free time afterwards, which I used to check out all the shopping in the area. I didn’t buy much – I only got the most legitimate pasta cookbook from a big bookstore I found. I thought it would be a good gift for my Dad for Father’s Day. It’s all in Italian, so we’re going to have to translate it, but the recipes look delicious, and it tells you how to make literally every kind of homemade pasta.

Anyway, I found the Milan Cathedral really interesting, especially since it was a huge topic of discussion in our Structures class here. It is a great example of a medieval church and other than Saint Peter’s at the Vatican, it is definitely the biggest I have seen. The Cathedral was such a big topic in our structures class because of the construction process that it went through. The Cathedral was mostly designed by a group of local Lombardi architects, but it had a lot of influence from Gothic Architecture from the North (whether or not the Lombardi were willing to admit it). There were a lot of bumps along the way, and it was doubted whether or not the Milanese could actually build the biggest Cathedral known to date. In fact, they didn’t succeed in my opinion, since it took the Milanese over 400 years to build it, by which time Saint Peter’s had already been completed and took the reign as the largest Cathedral in the world.

Venice:

Venice was truly an awesome experience. We stayed for a good 3 nights in Venice, and I’m glad we were given that chance to explore this city more than some of the others. It is truly the most unique city that has ever been built. Venice sits on a group of some 300 small islands, which are connected by a large series of footbridges. Cars are only allowed on one of the larger islands, and have to be parked there if you wish to continue deeper into Venice. It is the same situation with trains — There is a train station on one of the islands, but there doesn’t exist a local train system or metro throughout the rest of Venice. The style of life that they have created though, is actually preferable to the ones that exist with cars. It was so nice walking along the streets of Venice and not have to worry about getting run over by 200 Vespas driving at 200 mph. Instead of cars and trucks, the Venetians have to resort to these push carts that carry all the goods that they want to transport. It was funny watching all of these cart pushers running all over the city. The city also prides itself on being the longest running republican government, which the Venetian Republic lasted over 800 years.

The architecture in Venice was actually very well planned out for being such a crazy city design. Each island was very similar in nature in terms of streets and alleyways, so it was easy to make your way around each island, even if you had never stepped foot on that specific island.

Naturally, a few of my friends and I just had to take a gondola ride. It was necessary to get the full Venice experience, even if it was fairly expensive. Our gondola driver didn’t sing to us, but he commented on some of the important buildings that we passed as we made our way through the complex web of rivers. It was an awesome experience, and one that I believe everybody should experience before they die. Unfortunately, the gondola ride was over in about 45 minutes, and like the rest of the North field trip, came to an abrupt end on Thursday.

Back to Florence:

After the field trip up north was over on Thursday, we quite literally got dumped in Venice and were told to get back to Rome on our own however we liked. I was happy with that, since it presented a nice opportunity to see more of the northern cities that we weren’t quite so used to. A bunch of friends and I decided to stay in Venice for one more night, and then head back to Florence for the weekend, since we loved that city so much.

In Florence, since we didn’t have any class or field trips, we were excited to have some free time to do what we wanted. The most obvious thing to do was shop. I made only one large purchase while I was there – I got a nice leather over-the-shoulder briefcase that I’ve already used to carry my books to class every day. I started off shopping for this thing in one of the market stands outside, and as I was looking through them and talking with the guy, he realized that I was actually looking to buy something, and told me to follow him. He took me behind the stands to his store where he kept his entire inventory – He must have had over 300 briefcases in this store. I basically just looked through a ton of them and finally found my favorite one which I proceeded to buy. It was a fun experience since the custom is to negotiate prices at these markets. The price tag on the bag said 210 Euro, but I just laughed at him and he immediately dropped it to 160. I then made it seem like I was uninterested in the bag for that ridiculous price (even though I would have paid it), and he dropped it again to 120. I then countered and told him 100, which he accepted. I have no clue how much he actually paid for the bag, but I feel like I did an alright job considering it was my first time really bartering in a market like that.

I got all my other shopping done in the market too – mostly just gifts and stuff like that. It was really relaxing just walking around and having all day for personal stuff. I’m certainly not used to that amount of personal time with the amount of class and work that we have every day.

Next Weekend:

This upcoming Friday, I will be going to a villa in Tuscany for one night. I hope it will be a very relaxing and fun last weekend to the program! Well, hopefully I’ll be able to post one more time soon before I leave for good so I can tell you about Tuscany next weekend!

Ciao!

Location: Venice, Italy