Barcelona

Since my spring break is now over, I have time to write some new posts.  For the first part of my break I went to Barcelona, Spain for a few days.  Of all the places I have been so far, Barcelona reminded me of Rome the most at the time.  Looking back, I think that what made me think that was the similar climates because Barcelona definitely had a different feeling.  The first thing we did in Barcelona was to go see the different houses that were designed by Gaudi, who was a famous Catalonian artist and architect.  All of the houses that he designed are really crazy looking.  They were really colorful and looked like sandcastles - not like they were made out of building materials.  After looking at the houses, we took the metro to La Sagrada Familia which is a church designed by Gaudi as well.  The church was huge and looked like it was made of mud.  Apparently part of it was damaged in a fire and it won't even be finished until 2030.  I can't imagine what it will look like when it is finished.  Each side of the church looked different and it kind of reminded me of a monster.  Also, all the statues looked similar to Cubism art.

Gaudi Houses

La Sagrada Familia

Then we continued onto the Parc Guell which is known as the Gaudi Park.  It was one of the most breathtaking things I have ever seen.  It was just pavilion after pavilion of mosaic benches and designs.  There were a lot of little houses that looked like gingerbread houses and alot of underground walkways that  were styled like mud and tree roots.  In the front there was a huge mosaic of a lizard and the staircase was decorated with a mosaic as well.  The park was on a hill, as well, so I could see all of Barcelona extending into the ocean.  I also spotted La Sagrada Familia from the hill and it dwarfed all the other buildings.  It was definitely my favorite part of Barcelona.  I could have spent all day walking around because it never seemed to end.  

The second day in Barcelona I went to the Picasso Museum which has over 3,000 of his drawings and paintings.  The museum went in chronological order from Picasso's start as an artist to some of his most famous works.  A lot of his sketches were on display and I liked those because I didn't even know that Picasso started off doing more normal styles of art.  The end parts of the exhibit were my favorite because they had all of his Cubism paintings which were really colorful.  There was also a special exhibit at the museum that was about Picasso's involvement in anti-Fascist propaganda during the Spanish Civil War.  I enjoyed that exhibit because I learned a lot more about his life.

After the museum we walked to the port in Barcelona which was beautiful.  The weather was really nice that day so it was nice sitting on the water.  The port area of Barcelona reminded me of Florida or Los Angeles because there were a lot of wide streets lined with palm trees.  After the port we walked along Las Rambla which is the main boulevard.  On Las Ramblas there is a huge market selling every kind of food you could possibly image.  They had really disgusting meat products including every kind of animal tongue, intestines, and even whole goat heads that were skinned but still had the eyes on them.  We were all freaking out when we saw that stuff and I can't believe people actually buy that.  The seafood selection was really extensive as well with hundreds of kinds of shellfish, shrimps, and I even saw a whole octopus.  They did have alot of exotic fruits and vegetables too.  At night we went to the Barri Gothic, which is the famous cathedral in Barcelona.  It wasn't very well lit though because it was under construction so I didn't get a very good picture.

Overall I really enjoyed Barcelona and I wish I had more time there because I felt like there was still a lot more to see.  It also made me realize that I would like to travel around Spain more because there are so many different regions and cities that I didn't even consider visiting.

Pisa and Lucca

It is officially spring break now and since I don't have any plans to travel anywhere until Wednesday morning, my roommate and I decided to do a day trip yesterday to Pisa, Lucca, and Florence.  It was a lot in one day but we figured we should just go because Pisa and Lucca are really small and we have both already been to Florence.  All the towns are about an hour away from each other as well.  We got to Pisa first and got on a city bus straight to the  "Field of Miracles", which is where the Leaning Tower is.  It was a really nice day out and everyone was lying around on the grass near the buildings.  I didn't know this, but the Field of Miracles actually has the Leaning Tower and a duomo and baptistry too.  We learned that all of the architecture of the buildings is called "Pisa Romanesque" because it is different from traditional Renaissance buildings.  The Leaning Tower was really amazing.  Apparently as it was being built, three different architects tried to correct it but one side of the land it was built on was really marshy and that's why it leans.  All of the buildings on the grounds lean a little bit as well.  I think you can tell from pictures, especially the baptistry.  We took pictures of ourselves "holding" up the Leaning Tower which was really fun.

 Train ride along the Mediterranean 

 Field of Miracles

Me holding the Leaning Tower

After seeing the sights in Pisa, we got on the train for 30 minutes to Lucca, which is another small, lesser-known town in Tuscany.  Luckily I have the Rick Steves book so I knew about it.  Lucca was really beautiful and quiet.  We walked to one of the main piazzas where there was a duomo called San Michele.  The book said that the churches in Lucca are the same kind of  "Pisa Romanesque".  It was siesta so the duomo was closed but it was still pretty from the outside.  After that we walked to another main piazza called "Piazza Anfiteatro" because it is on the site of the ancient Roman amphitheater.  The piazza was actually oval shaped so you could tell it had followed a similar ground plan to the amphitheater.  At the piazza we sat and had a glass of wine and some cheese.  It was really nice because it was so sunny out and it was really quiet for the most part in the piazza.  After walking around for a few hours we headed back towards the train station and stopped at another cathedral.

 Lucca

 Duomo San Michele

 Piazza Anfiteatro

 Cathedral

Finally, we arrived in Florence where we walked back to the big duomo and around the streets selling the leather goods.  We didn't have that much time in Florence so we just got a quick dinner and then got on the train back to Rome.  It was a long day but relaxing at the same time.  I am leaving tomorrow morning for Barcelona and Dublin which I am really excited about so I will post pictures of that when I am back on Monday.

Mom and Dad Visit Italy

This past week my mom and dad have been here so it was pretty busy but nice because I saw a lot of places that I hadn't seen before.  My mom arrived Tuesday and my dad Thursday and they just left this morning.  Since my mom arrived on the Ides of March, we naturally went to the location where Julius Caesar was assassinated.  The building where he was killed was called the Theater of Pompey, however it doesn't exist anymore, but my professor pointed out the building that is now on the specific location in the theater where it occurred.  We then walked over to Piazza Mattei where the Turtle Fountain is, which is one of the most famous Renaissance fountains in Rome.  That night we ate at a restaurant in Trastevere that was recommended by Rick Steves, my mom's favorite tour guide.  I think we ate at a "Rick Steves"restaurant at least once a day for the rest of the week.  

 Location of Caesar's assassination

Turtle Fountain

On Wednesday my mom and I went to the Villa Farnesina which is an old home of the Farnese's, a wealthy family that had some popes and cardinals as relatives.  The Villa Farnesina was decorated with frescoes by Raphael and it was really amazing inside.  Unfortunately, there were no pictures allowed inside.  We didn't do much else on Wednesday because I still had a class and it was pouring rain all day.  

On Thursday, my dad arrived and we went over to Campo de' Fiori, where the market is, so I could show my parents where I buy dried fruit.  It was also the 150th anniversary of Italy's unification so there were a lot of people out and Italian flags everywhere.  Then I showed them around the Jewish Ghetto area where the remains of the  Portico of Octavia and the Theater of Marcellus are. just went to other main sights such as the Pantheon, Colosseum, and Largo Argentina.  My mom also brought Flat Stanley with her so we had to stop at all the places and take a picture of Flat Stanley with the Pantheon, etc. in the background.  I am pretty sure anyone who was watching us thought we were really weird.  Flat Stanley was left with me so I have to continue taking pictures of him everywhere I go.  

Artichoke pyramid in the Jewish Ghetto

Friday was finally nice out so we went on a day trip to Orvieto.  We walked around the town stopping at the Duomo, looking into the different workshops, and taking pictures of Flat Stanley with the landscape in the background.  Then my dad and I went into St. Patrick's Well, which is a giant well with about 400 stairs that you can walk down.  We walked into the well which was nice because there were openings in the wall where you could look both down at the well and then up at the sky, which slowly turned into a tiny circle of light.  After we got back to Rome, we went to the Cappuchin Crypt, which is a chapel underneath a church where there are thousands of bones of friars and monks.  Each room was decorated with different bones: one was skulls, another pelvises, and then thighs and legs.  There were also bone chandeliers and different decorations made out of small bones.  There were also some mummified bodies still in their robes sitting around the rooms.  It was really creepy and I don't know why anyone took the time to decorate every square inch of the rooms with bones.  There weren't any pictures allowed there either but here are some from online to show what it looked like.

 Mom and Dad in Orvieto

 Ceramics in Orvieto

 Looking up from the bottom of the well

Cappuchin Crypt

On Saturday, we went to the Appian Way, which is an ancient road built by the Romans to transport goods around Italy.  It was beautiful and it felt like we were in the countryside instead of a big city.  Along the Appian Way there are a lot of catacombs so we decided to go to the Catacombs of San Callisto, where we got a tour about two levels underground.  It was really dark and cold in the catacombs and I couldn't believe that people were actually buried there.  The guide said that the catacombs had four different levels and expanded about 12 miles.  She also said that there were about half a million people buried there.  The Catacombs of San Callisto is apparently one of 60 catacombs in Rome.  After the catacombs, we went to the Baths of Caracalla, which was a bath house where the elite people went during the Roman Empire.  The Bath house were a huge structure.  From the remains you could see that there were two stories and it was about the size of a huge stadium.  There were a lot of original mosaics on display featuring warriors and scenic images.  

 Appian Way

 Baths of Caracalla

Brussels

Over this past weekend I went to Brussels, Belgium with some of my roommates.  I was not really quite sure what to expect so I bought a European guidebook to get some ideas of where to go.  Being in Belgium was a completely different world from Italy.  The architecture is much different - there is old style gothic buildings next to new modern buildings.  The houses look much more northern-European rather than Mediterranean as well.  In Brussels they speak French and Dutch.  In Southern Belgium I heard that they speak German as well.  I took French in middle school and high school so luckily I was able to use some of that to follow directions.  The first thing I noticed about about Brussels was that it seemed like a melting pot of cultures.  There was both French and Dutch cuisine but there was also a lot of Chinese, Mexican, Greek, and Italian restaurants as well.  In Rome it is really hard to find anything that isn't Italian food.
The first thing we did was go to the Grand Place which is a 15th century market square in the center of Brussels.  All of the buildings were amazing.  They are gothic style and had so many tiny details on the spires and windows.  There was a flower market in the Grand Place and tons of really good restaurants.  People were just sitting on the stairs near the buildings, eating at the restaurants, and walking around having a good time.  It had a really great atmosphere, at night too, and it was definitely my favorite area of the city.

Later on Friday, we went to the Museum van de Geuze which is a brewery museum.  The brewery is family run and everyone was really friendly.  We did a self-guided tour through the museum, looking at the different machines that the beer is made in and the barrels in which it is stored and then at the end we got to taste two kinds.  The brewery specializes in a type of beer called Lambic beer which is a more sour-tasting beer.  They have fruity variations of the Lambic beer such as well that are sweeter.  I tried the basic Lambic beer and a Raspberry Lambic beer.  I thought that the Lambic was pretty good, considering the fact that I don't really like beer.  I really liked the raspberry beer though.
On our way back from the brewery we stopped at the Mannekin Pis, or "Pissing boy", which is a fountain with a tiny statue of a little boy going to the bathroom on top.  It is known as the Belgian national symbol and tons of people were crowded around this tiny statue.  The stores on the street sell models of the Mannekin Pis in any form you can imagine - shirts, key chains, statues, even chocolate.  It was pretty crazy.

Mannekin Pis

On Friday night we went to a French seafood restaurant.  I got grilled salmon which is great since it is one of my favorite foods and I haven't had any since being in Italy.  The waiter was kind of weird though and he kept asking if we were the Spice Girls.  I assumed he was kidding but then he kept bringing it up and then gave us each free glasses of sangria so we starting being unsure.  After dinner we went to the Delirium Cafe which is a bar that sells the Belgian beer as well as over 2,000 other kinds of beer.  It was really fun and decorated with vintage signs and the tables were just huge barrels with stools.  I tried a beer called Floris Cactus which is apparently made from a cactus flower.  It was light green too.

  Cactus Beer

The second day we walked to the Royal Palace which was beautiful.  We couldn't go inside but it reminded me of Versailles except with less extensive gardens.  After we walked over to a huge Gothic cathedral where the prince and princess of Belgium were married years ago.  It was really nice inside and there were people singing but it was a lot plainer than the Baroque and Renaissance churches in Rome.
After that we decided to take the metro to the end of the line to see the Atomium.  The Atomium is a huge model of an atom that was left over from the World Fair in 1958.  It was one of the weirdest things I have ever seen.  It was just giant silver globes connected by huge metal rods.  The information sign said that it was a model of an atom that had been enlarged 165 billion times.  You can go inside the Atomium but we decided not to because there was a long line.  I heard that the Belgian people have mixed feelings about the Atomium.  Some think it is really cool but others think it is a huge eyesore, kind of like the glass pyramids in front of the Louvre.

 Royal Palace

Atomium

We went to the Brussels' Chocolate Museum as well which had a ton of free samples as well as a demonstration at the end.  Everyone crowded into a small kitchen that smelled like chocolate and an old man showed us how they make different shapes with the chocolate using molds.  He told us about all the different kinds of chocolate as well and at the end we all got to taste it.  It was definitely one of my favorite parts of the trip.

The second night we decided to try Dutch restaurant so we could see every kind of food they have in Brussels.  The food was a lot heavier with a lot of different meats that I had never even heard of.  I decided to try chicken that came with salad.  When it came out, it was actually an entire 1/2 chicken!  It ended up being really good but I had to carve it myself and it came with a sauce that was similar to tartar sauce.

I would definitely want to take another trip back to Belgium since there are so many other cities there that we didn't get to see such as Bruges and Antwerp so hopefully that will happen sometime in the future.  This is an unnaturally long post but I just really wanted to get everything in.