Hey all! Here I am again, ready with another inbox-busting massively group email about my exploits in the Old World. I hope this finds you all in good health and spirits, and that school (for those of you in school) is going as well as it can, considering it IS school after all. Anyway last time I wrote, I hadn't mentioned my field trips, so I'll start there. The first weekend of school, I went to Ravenna on the Adriatic Sea. Ravenna is an ancient town, which only became big with the rise of Christianity. At the split of the Roman Empire, the capital of the East was Constantinople, and the capital of the West was Ravenna. There are tons of churches and baptisteries dating from the 400s and before. The main attraction in Ravenna, it seems, are the many mosaics and frescoes in the old churches. Like all of Italy, there is a lot of history in Ravenna, and much of it can be directly interpreted from the wall paintings and art. Very cool. I had my first Euro McDonald's there. I just had fries, which I actually thought were better than back home, because they weren't quite so salty. Ah well, still cruddy by comparison to real food.
The next weekend, I went to Pisa, Lucca and Populonia. I was supposed to get on the bus for Pisa at 8am at school. I set my alarm for 6:30, but I guess it didn't want to function that day. I haven't had any problem with it til then, and upon inspecting it to see what I had done wrong, I couldn't find anything wrong. It was happily set for 6:30am (yup, double checked the am/pm thing) with the ringer set and everything. I dunno. So I woke up at 8:45, and jumped out of bed. I went downstairs to tell my momma that I had missed the bus, but she started spewing incomprehensible Italian at me. I got the gist: she wanted to me to hurry and get dressed, hop on a bus to the train station, and get on a train to Pisa. I figured why not? I didn't have anything else planned that day. :) My train got into Pisa about an hour before the group left on the bus for Lucca. I met them in the Cathedral (with some help from my trusty cell phone) I got some pictures of the Leaning Tower, the cathedral and the baptistery, and hopped merrily onto the bus. In Lucca, we rented bikes and rode around the town. For some reason, there were no cars allowed in the downtowns of most major European cities that day (silly Greens...) so it was the perfect day to rent bikes, because we could ride around downtown Lucca unhindered. We circled the city on the defensive wall surrounding the city. It was pretty cool indeed.
The next day, I went to Populonia and saw some ancient Etruscan burials. There's not much left of the Etruscans besides burials anymore, mostly because the Romans razed all of their structures some years ago after a civil war gone awry. The burials were very interesting, but so was the scenery. Populonia is just a bit north of Rome on the Tyrrhenian Sea, built up on a hill that juts out into the water quite a bit. So it was pretty incredibly beautiful. We had lunch on the beach, and I got my feet in the water, but I forgot my trunks, so I didn't go swimming. Zut!
This weekend, I'm going to try to go to Munich for the last weekend of Octoberfest. I'll let you know how that goes once it has gone. Life otherwise continues to be pretty great. I'm realizing more and more how dirty Florence really is. Dog poo everywhere (and some horse and cow poo here and there) and cars with really dirty exhaust. But then I see the Duomo, and I can forget about it for awhile. The Palazzo Pitti (the palace of the Pitti family) and the Boboli Gardens also have a similar effect. There are too many beautiful things to name or even count here. So overall, no complaints. Vita e buono. Buonissimo! Ciao all. Love you much.
-Brian