Pisa, Lucca, Viareggio and more of Rome

Wow, so I have a lot of catch up to do. I'll just start with two weekends ago. We decided to stay in Rome two weekends ago, which is always a nice idea. Midterms were last week so the weekend consisted of some sightseeing and walking around our beautiful city, but unfortunately also included a whole lot of studying (a good preview to the next week). But one afternoon Jillian, Maria and I went looking for the key hole on Aventine Hill that supposedly had an amazing view. That afternoon was so beautiful! On the way up to the key hole we stumbled upon this orange garden that had an amazing view as well. It looked over the entire city! We will definitely be going back there for a picnic or studying once it gets a little warmer. We did eventually find the key hole, and it really was great. It's this random door with a big key hole that you look through and is a garden with a little aisle of ivy going up to a window thing that has a perfect view of St. Peter's! It was really neat. It was also cool because we were standing obviously on Italian soil, bu looking through a garden that was property of another country (I can't remember the name), then looking at St. Peter's which is on Vatican property, so technically we were looking at three different countries at once! After that, we kept walking and found this quaint little church. It had amazing echoing abilities! No one else was in there so we started humming and it sounded so cool! We were going to try to sing something but then people walked in haha. We want to go back there for mass sometime though. We walked on and found ourselves near St. Paul Outside the Wall which we thought was actually pretty far away. We saw the pyramid which was cool. We ended up taking a bus back for me to make it to class in time, but realized we weren't as far away as we thought so we're probably take that walk again sometime.

That weekend was also Valentine's Day. Jillian and I decided to have our own special dinner that night. We got all dressed up and were really excited about getting some really good food. We asked our friend Daniel where we should go for dinner, and he suggested a place right around the corner. Unfortunately, when we got there we soon found out that a nice little restaurant on Valentine's Day might be a little hard to come by without a reservation. We were disappointed but kept walking. We ended up at the Pantheon, and thought that that would serve as a great backdrop. We were stupid though and picked the worse restaurant in that piazza! It was so disappointing, it was probably the worse meal I've had in Rome! Jillian's tasted like it was microwavable Chef Boyardee! And I don't even know what mine tasted like, horrible is all I can say! We were a little perturbed to say the least, but to make things better we went straight to Giolitti's, which is the best gelato in Rome. Some of the friends we've made there helped make the night a little better and gave me an extra flavor :) After that, we headed back to the room and made the wise decision to watch "Three Coins in the Fountain", which is a movie that won the Academy Award in 1954. It is all shot in Rome, and it was just so much fun to see our little world on a movie! Of course, it was an incredibly cheesy romantic story, but what else do you really want to watch on Valentine's Day!?

The next week was midterms, no fun at all! Most of the time here the work load is very minimal (compared to back at Millsaps), which how it should be while you're studying abroad trying to travel etc. But last week definitely was a lot of work! But now it's all over and so far the grades have come back good. Friday night, to celebrate being done with midterms and to make up for our horrible meal the past weekend, we made the safe and delicious decision of going to Baffeto's for dinner. It was so good! They have the best pizza ever and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who comes to Rome. Also, in the spirit of Catholicism, being in Rome and all, we watched Sister Act, which was super fun.

Saturday (this being this last Saturday), Leah, Jillian and I left for a three city tour. We took a train Pisa first. Pisa was nice, mostly just for the tower and the surrounding area, other than that, there really isn't much at all to see. The tower is really neat though! It's just amazing to me that it's still standing! It was really funny because like us, everyone there was taking the picture where you look like you're holding up the tower. What made it really funny was that there was this huge open grass area, but no one was supposed to be out on it, but of course everyone did go out, so every 5 minutes you heard the patrol whistling telling people to get off. Other than the tower, we went in the cathedral which was pretty. We also went into the Bapistry because it supposedly had a really cool acostic system thing and they did demonstrations. This one lady would get everyone quiet and then would sing a note and it would echo back a whole bunch of times at all the different pitches. It was kind of crazy, I really wish I could have heard a choir in there though. We also went into this old cemetery that had frescos. It was pretty because the sun was setting and was shining in through these arches.

After Pisa we hopped on a train to Lucca, which was a pretty ride because the sun was still setting. Ahh the Tuscan sun is just so pretty! We got to Lucca and found our hostel which ended up being that we were the only ones going to be staying there and the guy that ran it didn't stay the night, so we were all a little unsure about that, but no worries we all came out alive (however, I did wake up to the sound of a really creepy, scary cat that had to have been very angry right outside our window). That night we went into the city walls to walk around. The city of Lucca literally does have these huge medieval walls surrounding it, which is super cool! We walked around the town for a long time, getting lost, but that was ok. Lucca is much less touristy than any of the cities I had been to so far, I really liked it. It's a town you could live in very easily. We got dinner in Lucca, but headed back to the hostel early because we were all exhausted.

The next day we walked around Lucca a little more. We found this really neat tower (there are a lot of towers in Lucca) that had trees at the top. We climbed up the stairs, lots and lots of stairs, to the top and got a beautiful view of Lucca just as the city was waking up. It was very serene. Then we grabbed breakfast and headed to the train station to catch a train to Viareggio for some Carnevale fun.

Carnevale is the Italian version of Mardi Gras. When we got there there were so many people getting off the train all dressed up in all different sorts of silly costumes. Once we got to the festivities the costumes only got better. There were countless families dressed up together, in bee, skunk, hot pink bunnies, royal families, Italian mobsters, anything you could think of. We found some food for lunch and top it off when some gelato while we sat listening to the band that was playing. After a while the parade started. There were so many weird floats! We didn't really understand them, we wished we knew more about the culture so we could understand better. One of the more interesting ones was a communist float that had a huge devil's face on it with communist symbols all over it. All the floats were all so interesting and creative. Supposedly there was one with Obama on it somewhere along the line but we had to run to catch our train before it got to where we were. Overall the trip was really fun, it was nice to see three different places in one weekend.

This week has gone well so far. Nice change from midterms. Today was Ash Wednesday, so with the start of Lent, was the beginning of the station churches in Rome. Each day there is a different church that has traditionally held mass during lent in the years passed. So this morning Jillian and I, along with a group of other girls were up before 6am so we could make it to the 645am mass. Although it was early it was nice. Today's church was up on the Aventine Hill which of course was a pretty walk. And all the seminarians (many that we know from Mass at the Saint Mary's chapel and from God Squad, which we have one Mondays) were there. It was a nice start to the day. Later on today a few of us attempted to go to this outdoor market near the Vatican but it wasn't open today unfortunately, but we did get some gelato from probably the best to get it after Giolitti's, so all was good. Then tonight some of us went to see Revolutionary Road at the theatre near us. It was a good movie I thought, sad though.

So I hope I've caught up on things now. And p.s. someone told me it is hard to leave a comment because I guess you had to sign into aol or google or something to leave one, but I changed it now so that you don't have to do that, you can just do anoymously, just sign your name at the end so I know who wrote it.