Thurs­day, Sep­tem­ber 10^th, 2009

The day before our Flo­rence trip, and pos­si­ble trip to Venice, so after class Rachel and I went to the library to try and fig­ure out where we were going to stay. A big group of stu­dents in our group were going to stay in a duplex that was reg­is­tered to one per­son, which I was try­ing to avoid. The issue (besides hav­ing 10 peo­ple crammed into two rooms) is that you need to reg­is­ter where you’re stay­ing with the hotel. If unreg­is­tered peo­ple are in the room and the police come by (and they do this), these peo­ple are gen­er­ally sent to jail for the night, some­thing which I was try­ing to avoid.

After a long dis­cus­sion, we decided not to plan for Venice, and to instead plan our Sat­ur­day and Sun­day while already in Flo­rence. With this in mind, Rain, Rachel and I went to the Capi­to­line Museums.

These muse­ums were awe­some. The Treaty of Rome was signed in one of the rooms, the orig­i­nal she-wolf of Rome was in another, and every­where was ancient art and sculp­tures. The art­work was sim­ply outstanding!

Get­ting back, I watched the fall­out of the Venice trip amongst our group. There was much drama involved, as many peo­ple had already paid for the room or train tick­ets. Luck­ily we were smart and didn’t do any of this, so just kind of hid and watched the whole thing unfold. Much later there was a huge party at our apart­ment, where I sat around and lis­tened to music while watch­ing every­one else drink way too much.

Fri­day, Sep­tem­ber 11^th, 2009

Remem­ber that party? Unfor­tu­nately what they didn’t really con­sider is that we had to meet in front of the Rome Cen­ter at 8am. I woke up nice and early and packed for about one and a half nights, as that was really all I was will­ing to carry. We got on the bus and took the super fast Eurostar express to Flo­rence. 250km and 90 min­utes later, we arrived in the ancient town founded by Ceasar.

We took a bus to the heights sur­round­ing town, as that was where the Euro­pean Uni­ver­sity Insti­tute (EUI) is located. This post-graduate insti­tu­tion of higher learn­ing is founded by EU mem­ber states and sup­ports research and other edu­ca­tional goals to advance EU pol­icy. We had a pretty stan­dard cafe­te­ria lunch before tour­ing the grounds of the uni­ver­sity. Then we had a lec­ture from one of the Pro­fes­sors there about 9/11 (since it was the anniver­sary, after all) and the impli­ca­tions it has for human rights.

After a recep­tion at the EUI after­wards, we took the bus back to Flo­rence Proper and were on our own for the rest of the week­end. I took a nap before wan­der­ing around the river and then going into the inte­rior of the place with Rain before get­ting back to our hotel at mid­night or so.

Sat­ur­day, Sep­tem­ber 12^th, 2009

Wak­ing up at 8:00 for break­fast at the hotel, Rachel and I went to see “David,” which was not that great at first glance. Yet once I processed the art­work, I real­ized it was fairly impres­sive after all. Then we went to the Duomo (Flo­rence Cathe­dral) and toured the inside before climb­ing up the very long way to the top of the dome to enjoy an amaz­ing view of the Flo­ren­tine sky­line. We then met Rain and went to the Flo­rence mar­ket where I got some scarves and ties before wan­der­ing off to eat lunch. Going back to the Hotel, Rachel and I had to plan our next move. In one hour of inter­net time at the hotel, we planned our des­ti­na­tion, found a train sched­ule, booked a hotel, and in the clos­ing minute scrawled out some ran­dom street names to where the hotel was located. We did not get a map.

We want to Palazzo Vec­chio and stayed a while in the cen­ter of the renais­sance before going to Ponte Vec­chio (the bridge with all of the jew­elry ven­dors on either side of the street cross­ing the road).

Slowly ambling back to the train sta­tion, we got on the Regional Train to Peru­gia depart­ing at 18:13. Arriv­ing in the dark at 20:18, I man­aged to buy 4 bus tick­ets from the rather unhelp­ful guy at the booth. When I asked if there was a map, he said that they didn’t have any, despite being an “Infor­ma­tion Booth,” and said there were no maps around since every place was closed. He did point us to take a bus to the city cen­ter though.

A help­ful guy wait­ing for the bus pointed us to the “right” auto­bus to get to the City Cen­ter. We duti­fully got on, and as the bus went on, it seemed we weren’t really going any­where. I was keep­ing an eye out for any signs to the City Cen­ter, and after what seemed to last for­ever, we showed up at what seemed to be the top of the hill and a semi-legit look­ing square. We got off, and saw a long street which was wide and full of peo­ple. Cau­tiously going down this via, we found the cen­ter square, but had no idea where to go from there. I decided to cir­cle the square clock­wise in hopes that we would find a street or Piazza which was one of the land­marks we had writ­ten down. After what seemed like for­ever, we found a small map which had one of the land­marks. Almost run­ning down to this piazza, we finally found an amaz­ing sign which pointed to our hotel.

I can’t really say how per­fect it all worked out for nav­i­ga­tion. We made some good guesses and man­aged to find the right place. Later we were talk­ing about how calm we seemed on the bus, while indi­vid­u­ally we were both pan­ick­ing in our heads about where we were going, if the stranger was actu­ally help­ful, where to get off, and where to go from there. The mis­take we made was not get­ting a map before­hand from some­where. I just assumed there would be a map at the Bus Ticket / Infor­ma­tion booths which were every­where. Les­son learned!

It was 9pm when we got in to the hotel, and luck­ily the lady who co-owned it spoke Eng­lish quite well, as the Italian-portion of my brain was com­pletely fried. She gave us a map, and some places to eat.

After throw­ing our stuff in our room, we went to a small street and got some won­der­ful Mar­garita Pizza before find­ing an under­ground lair restau­rant and got some bread with mixed top­pings, a baked cheese dish with truf­fles (the mush­room), Tiramisu, and some much-needed wine.

On the way back to our hotel, we saw the most amaz­ing thing ever: it seemed the entire town was walk­ing towards the cen­ter square at mid­night. Some were young, some were old, some were wear­ing busi­ness suits, and even the town bishop showed up.

The Palazzo was com­pletely packed, and every­one was speak­ing Ital­ian. We have no idea why the party was hap­pen­ing, but it was a great expe­ri­ence and seemed to be fairly authentic.

Sun­day, Sep­tem­ber 13^th, 2009

After a much needed full night of sleep, we woke up at 8:30 and had a light break­fast at the hotel before going off to explore Peru­gia. It was rain­ing! The streets were empty, and it was creepy as we walked through the town and found some awe­some streets to walk down. Find­ing the old walls and lots of steps, we went around aim­lessly before find­ing the main square again. We went to a museum fea­tur­ing art­work from 12^th cen­tury into present day, and was quite inter­est­ing to view the pro­gres­sion of artis­tic tech­niques. Then we went to an old Entr­uscian Well and a few more muse­ums fea­tur­ing var­i­ous pieces of the Entr­uscian cul­ture, includ­ing one which had a huge under­ground exca­va­tion site which was quite awesome.

One inter­est­ing thing about Peru­gia is that they have a series of esca­la­tors all over the city which help peo­ple from the “sub­urbs” make the jour­ney to the cen­ter of the city, and part of this net­work is an under­ground tram which shut­tles peo­ple through the area. The sys­tem was fairly amaz­ing and very modern.

We then went to the under­ground fortress museum/ruins which was the per­fect lair before find­ing a bus back to the train sta­tion. Tak­ing a 2.5 hour train ride, we arrived at Rome around 8:30pm and took a crowded bus back to the stop near the Campo. One inter­est­ing thing was that a priest was right next to us on the bus, and I’ve never seen Ital­ians so well-behaved. They don’t bat an eye when a nun is around, but the priest made every­thing very calm and orderly.

That was about it really for the week­end. The pic­tures for this might come later, as there are a lot of them and I don’t really have that much time!