Mosaic Masters and Tiny Towns

February 2, 2010

Once again bright and early we wandered out into the Sicilian world, this time to explore the city of Palermo. We met up with the professor we had met yesterday who would be our tour guide for the day. Our first stop would be the Cappella Palatina in the Palazzo dei Normanni. If I thought that the Cathedral at Monreale was covered in gold mosaic, it was nothing compared to this. Gold reflected off of every surface while every vibrant color possible exploded in between. Even after almost 900 years after its construction the Cappella looks as if someone had come yesterday with the newest, most vibrant Bic dye and re-colored all the mosaic pieces. The wooden ceiling looked as if all the bee’s in Italy had just left because of the honeycomb patterns so intricately woven throughout.

Dragging me away, mouth still hanging open we wandered to the Palermo Cathedral. The Cathedral itself is a monster of a building highly decorated in baroque architecture (ie its has a lot goin on all over it). For as impressive as a façade as the Cathedral has, the inside was a little disappointing inside. Stark white with very little details, it looks like it was a house just built and the owners are still waiting for the painters to come. The contrast was almost startling.

We wandered throughout the city going in and out of a few more churches (non of which I ever say a name for…) all of which were beautiful. I was amazed that on every corner it seemed there could be yet another something to see. Like always in Italy I have come to realize. After a few churches, we ended up at one of the major art galleries in Palermo.

After meandering through the gallery for a while, we all decided that because it was such a nice day we would take a quick trip to a nearby seaside town called Cefalu. Once there we explored the tiny town, seeing the duomo, winding streets and buildings that seemed to blend into one another. The streets all seemed to go uphill no matter what direction you were walking in, and there never seemed to be one that led in a straight line. When wandering we saw many signs for supposed Roman ruins, but once follows you ended up at someones bright red front door. Since we got there late in the afternoon, around siesta, most everything was closed, and looked as if it was going to remain closed for the rest of the day, if not year. This lead us to aimlessly wander up and down the ever uphill streets until we stumbled upon an alleyway that led to the beach and took in the familiar smells and sounds that I miss so much.

cathedrals and crypts

February 1, 2010  

On our first day on this beautiful island of Sicily we headed out bright and early to city of Monreale. Hiking up the cobbled streets to the town center, we arrived at the Cathedral in the center. Once again I had arrived at one of the million monuments that I had seen in art history classes and books and finally was coming to life in front of me. I walked into the cathedral and all the walls glistened with gold mosaics. White marble and deep blue, green and reds surrounded ever inch of the cathedral.  There was not one surface left without at least one tiny detail. 

Over the altar, in a huge dome, sat all the saints and the trinity in perfect mosaic gold overlooking the entire cathedral. We went up onto a somewhat terrace that wrapped around the upper part of the cathedral. After walking up the narrow staircase we arrived at a point that overlooked not only the courtyard of the cathedral but what seemed like all of Sicily. After exiting the cathedral we wandered around the little town for a while finding beautiful mountain and ocean views and winding streets with colorful doors and mosaic house fronts.

After leaving Monreale, we all headed to the University of Palermo to meet up with some Italian students there. All the students were in a translation Italian/English course. While there Giovanna gave a talk and tips about translation work.

We left the university, we headed to the Capuchini Crypt of Palermo. The crypt’s have about 6000 bodies visible and over 8000 in its holdings. The walls are lined with row after row of bodies now decayed after centuries of time. Some still with hair and beards, teeth, all still in clothing, however ripped and disheveled. One little girl, about 3 years old was perfectly preserved, with all of her skin, hair, and perfectly dressed still after about 100 years, and looked as if she was sleeping. The crypt itself so silent you could hear every step you took, you were afraid to whisper to disturb everything around you, both out of respect and in fear that a louder voice might cause bodies to cascade down the hall. (understandably since it was a religious site there were no pictures allowed, and I felt weird at the idea of snapping illegal photos of copses, but I do encourage a google at lease..) 

That night the entire group, all 22 of us, went out to dinner together. Eating, laughing and reminiscing on a wonderful day we all looked forward to the following day. 

Sicilian Sunshine and Mafia Men

January 31, 2010

Today marked our first official day in Sicily. We left cold dreary cloudy Florence in afternoon and landed in bright sunny Sicily about two hours later (after most likely the bumpiest flight I have ever experienced- I do not think anyone thought we were going to make it to Sicily, but at least we were going to die happy.) Seeing sun, and having it stay in the sky for more that 10 minutes was so refreshing that within 10 minuets of being in Sicily I knew it was going to be a fabulous trip. I think everyone’s mood improved about 99.9% once getting off the plane and walking into the sunlight and realizing we would not have to open a school book, Word, or a dictionary for at least a week. We met up with our driver for the week, Gianni, who we would soon find out is completely crazy, and left the Catania airport to drive three-ish hours to Palermo, passing beautiful country sides of mountain (see picture), green hills, and orange tree groves,  where we would e staying for the next three nights. 

After checking into our hotel, Lenora, Olivia, Sera and I headed out to find some dinner. Being Sunday, and Italy naturally everything was closed. We stopped to ask a two (seemingly) policemen where there would be a place open to eat and after some deliberation, one of the men who we had thought was a policeman but we then noticed only one of them was in uniform, decided to walk us down the street to his favorite restaurant. Thinking this was only slightly shady, we walked down the block convinced that he was part of the Mafia. Once arriving at the restaurant, which was in fact only down the block, the man (who we found out was named Jonh – his spelling) ate at the table next to us interjecting things into our conversation in a weird mix of English and Italian, we were further convinced of his Mafia connection. But at least we have a friend inside now, and will be protected we figured. After a very strange dinner we stoled around Palermo for a little while ( picture above is the theatre across from our hotel) , and after a while we headed back to the hotel and passed out after a long day, to rest up for our next exciting day. 

ps - if you want to see more of my pictures you can go to my photobucket page at
http://s36.photobucket.com/home/breanal/allalbums
the password is florenceitaly

Old Italian bones and gemstones.

January 30, 2010

We had yet another day exploring the city. This time we headed to the Museum of Paleontology and Geology, after having a very difficult time finding it because apparently no one in Florence has heard of the museum or the street that it is located on, we finally found the museum and it was well worth the hour and a half (maybe more) that we searched fro it. Sera and I meandered through room after room of prehistoric dinosaur and mammoth bones and fossilized rocks and shells. It was amazing to see how well preserved all the bones were after so many thousands of years. It was also pretty cool to see that most of them were not in glass cases, yet wide open to the public, like most things in Italian museums, which is very different from most American museums. The only thing keeping people from reaching out and touching everything is general consciousness and respect. Even if it might be a little naive of me, for some reason I never pictured dinosaurs or mammoths roaming around Italy. Over in the geology part of the museum, there were rocks of ever color you could imagine and then some, including radioactive, and neon.

 

After the museum, we headed home to pack for our weeklong trip to Sicily that we would be leaving for the next day! 

Florentine Exploring

January 29, 2010

 After getting the exploring bug the day before, Sera and I headed out again to discover more of the city we call home yet know so little of on Friday and I think we did more “sight seeing” in one day than we have the whole semester.

First we headed to the Museum of the History of Science. Unfortunately we found out when we arrived that most of the museum is under restoration so only one floor was open. But we happily saw everything on that floor anyway and saw many sciency gadgets, most of which we had no idea what their use was for but looked cool.

Next, we headed to the Museum of the History of Photography. It was pretty neat to see so many photos from the start of photography, and see how little the outcome and the prints themselves have changed even thought the technology has changed so drastically. The exhibit of the range of cameras from the first to present day showed how amazing the technology has changed from not so long ago.

After, we wandered to the Medici Palace by San Lorenzo. In here we got to see the private quarters, including a private chapel, government quarters, some of which are still in use, and a marble museum. All of which were beautiful. Sera and I both agreed that we wouldn’t mind having one of the couple hundred chandeliers in our house one day.

After our full day of museums, we headed to a literary apparativo with some other girls from school that Giovanna had invited us to. The talk was about immigrant writers and other authors that have written about immigrant authors, and little did we know that Giovanna would be one of the authors that they would speak about. After listening to the discussion, some of us headed out to dinner all together and after out long day of Florentine exploring we headed home. 

And back to the facts and artifacts.

From the time I last wrote you to January 28, 2010

Where to begin… its seems like centuries since I have last written. I’m not so good at the upkeep on this I see. Since we last spoke a few things have happened I’d say. As the winter portion of our program wrapped up the work kept pilling up never ceasing fury. Finally the end was in sight and Friday, December 18 rolled around and I was booked on a flight home to sunny Malibu, California, leaving the work (yeah right – the four 10 page papers and 2 books all in Italian all came with me) and bad weather behind. Well actually that’s what I thought until it started snowing, yes snowing, in Florence the night before my flight in both Florence and Pairs and therefore canceling all flights leaving through Florence through Paris for the following morning. I would try again the next day so Saturday morning bright and early at 4am I started my travels yet again in the snow, only to find at 6:30 am at the Florence airport that it was once again closed due to weather and we would have to be bussed to Pisa and try from there. Too bad the storm heard that and came along for the ride. 9 hours later we took of from Pisa to Paris (if you ever need suggestions of where to eat or sit in the Pisa airport gimme a holla). Unfortunately all flights to Los Angeles had already departed for the day, so I would have to stay in Paris for the night. At 10 am the Sunday morning I finally was on a flight to Los Angeles, that actually left the ground and 12 hours later landed in Los Angeles. It might have taken me three days to get there but I finally got home. Being home was very nice and relaxing but there was a weird thing going on around me all the time – everyone spoke English all the time. Everywhere. Kinda weird …just saying. After three(ish) weeks of California I bitter sweetly came back here to Florence (I know too bad for me right?)

           

The first the weeks of being back launched us into end of the semester crunch time. There was hardly a moment where I was not on my computer where Word was not open, my fingers not furiously typing out Botticelli, Italian folk music, fashion advertising campaigns, or a popular Italian book. 40 written pages later, 3 written exams and 2 oral exams finally I made it to the end of the semester, and alive somehow.

 Last Thursday, following the end of exams, Sera, Claire and I decided to celebrate and go explore the “ Vintage Selection”, the vintage part of the fashion weeks that have been happening all over the city recently. It took place in an old abandoned station, and most likely every vintage clothing store in Italy had a booth set up showcasing everything from retro Chanel bags, to planters made from children’s books, to sunglasses Elton John wished he had. It was hard to know where to begin, where to look next and how to take it all in, yet somehow we managed.

Sera and I then bought a pick-nick for ourselves to eat in Piazza Maria Novella and were promptly attacked by all of the pigeons that call Florence home. After lunch I headed out for a giro (walk/stroll) to kill some time before heading home by myself and ended up accidentally finding the Archeological Museum.  It was always on my long list of museums and things to see in the city, and had come strongly recommended (thanks Matthew!) but like most things I had not gotten around to it yet like most other things thanks to the obscene amount of work that we have had this past semester. I entered the museum only to find a surplus of hidden treasures in a building that seemed as if it was about to fall in on you at any second. Luckily for me it did not, and instead it lead me through a maze Roman treasures and Egyptian artifacts (yes that is a real mummy to the right, and if the picture was better you could see the actual bones), for the most part perfectly preserved. Being the only person in the museum I might have sneaked a few illegal photos of about everything, but without flash so not hurting anyone or anything right?