My roommate and I decided to take a day trip to Siena. I had read that there was a church that housed the relics of St. Catherine, namely her head and a finger, and for some sick reason I felt like checking it out. Besides, Siena is also known for its pastries and sweets, the duomo and the piazza where a biannual horse race is run. It ended up being a tasty. Albeit short, little trip. We ended up trying a Bacio di Siena, which is a chocolate-shelled, cream-and-fruit-and-nut-filled cool treat.
We saw the piazza where they ran the race, the tall tower where the town hall once was, as well as the duomo. Built around the same time as the Orvietan duomo, the duomo of Siena has stripes and decoration similar to ours. But when I think of the duomo of Orvieto, it is “my” duomo, “our” duomo, the duomo I walk past every single day, so naturally Meghan and I were a little competitive about the duomo of Siena. “Ours is prettier,” one of us said, the other agreeing vehemently. “This one is nice, but ours is better.” The marble floor, covered 11 months of the year, has depictions of events important for Siena, for Italy, for Western Civilization, but I couldn’t’ tell you what they were. My favorite thing about the duomo was the ceiling. There are few ceilings of note from my life: the Sistine Chapel, the ceiling of Assisi, and the ceiling in Siena. The blue background and golden stars studded the dome, but weren’t muddled by competing images of angels or creation of man or whatever. Just the stars.
Shopping. Then we ate a cheese plate with bread and wine, also tasty. The church of S. Domenico, where St. Catherine’s relics are, was totally anticlimactic. If someone’s head is supposedly a relic, I want it there in all its grotesque glory, but alas, her finger looked like the ones we use at Halloween and the head was either nowhere to be found or supposedly a wax one…

So I decided this needed its own entry.

Family: Remember the email I sent regarding the musical moment? Well, this was a musical morning…

The day after Halloween, All Saint’s Day, there was an optional field trip for which we could sign up. Originally 7 students had signed up, but events from the previous nights prohibited most of them from attending…ie my roommates and I were the only ones who showed up at 9am in the piazza to meet our bamfin professor, Claudio. Orvieto’s streets were deserted. The holiday meant that people were either sleeping in (the lazy ones) or possibly at mass or the cemetery (the devout ones).

We waited for ten minutes and then hopped into the van, which was completely oversized for our piddly four-person expedition. Claudio took us to the dig site, where there was an ancient Etruscan road being uncovered. We hopped back into the van and drove up to the best view of Orvieto, past a farm with pigs and sheep and horses, and we could see the entire clifftop. It was indescribable. Next stop was the top of the street where we could overlook Lake Bolsena, which is home to 2 mini-islands. One of the islands is private property of the Prince of Dragon, and the other island was owned by a princess of some sort and she ended up being strangled…but she had treasure, that is supposedly buried partially here in Orvieto. As Claudio told us this story, in the background the olive harvest had begun; an old woman wearing a scarf and boots was handpicking olives as a machine shook them off the tree by her side.
We headed down to Bolsena itself, and saw the lake. It was cold and windy, but Meghan enjoyed playing with the ducks anyway. I was also freezing, and I was wearing my scarf like a babushka and Claudio’s camouflage army jacket, which was definitely too big for me. I looked pretty awesome, if I do say so myself.

After our view of the lake, Ploy, Meghan and I were under the impression we were on our way back to Orvieto. However, we drove back to where there was the brilliant view of Orvieto and Claudio parked the car at a cabin…we were confused, but hopped out. It turned out to be Claudio’s mother’s home, and this was the most musical moment of it all: they had a spread ready for us for lunch…sauteed eggplant, 4 cheeses, quince butter and honey to go with the cheese, Claudio toasted bread in the fire and they made old-school bruschetta (toasted bread, rub garlic on it, drizzle olive oil on it–extra virgin–and salt). They also made us fresh roasted chestnuts. We had proseco. Then we also got to try something that apparently isn’t even sold in stores: visciole (sour cherries) but they are basically marinated in their own juices and sugar, left out in the sun, and the sugar dissolves and alcohol ferments. They were delicious. We enjoyed food and good company and conversation and it was the most satisfying morning I have possibly ever had. We returned home full and happy, so happy that Meghan and I cried a little.

It wasn’t the best fieldtrip ever because we saw things nobody had seen before (even though nobody will get to see exactly what we saw in the exact way we saw it) but the feeling of the morning. It was just the three of us students with a professor who seems to know everything about anything and is more than willing to share his knowledge, and we are in one of the most beautiful countries in the world enjoying food and drink made with the reverence that only Italians can have for food and drink.

I love my life right now.

Baci grossi a tutti.

Our fieldtrip this week was to Sperlonga, where the Emperor Tiberius, who succeeded Augustus, had a villa. It’s on the coast and is home to a huge cave where Tiberius apparently had a banquet hall…according to Tacitus and other sources, there was an incident during a dinner banquet wherein part of the cave collapsed, killing a few servants and almost killing Tiberius, who was saved by a loyal friend.

What is cool about the villa and the cave isn’t necessarily how amazing it once was, because it’s hard to picture with the few ruins that are left of the actual villa (although it’s a great example of the type of ‘opus reticulatum’ masonry they used to fortify and build walls) but the statuary groups that were in the cave.

In the middle of the pool that’s in the cave was a statuary group depicting Scylla attacking Odysseus’ ship. According to legend, the Scylla lived not far from the ancient Sperlonga. In the back of the cave was another one showing Odysseus and his men blinding the Cyclops Polyphemus, which occurred, according to legend, in Polyphemus’ cave. Other statues included the rape of Ganymede that was placed at the top of the entrance of the cave, and the abduction of the Palladine sculpture from Athens. All of the sculptures show stuff from the Odyssey (Cool) and the museum at the villa has a lot of the originals preserved (cooler) and the two main groups—Scylla and Polyphemus—are strategically placed in locations in the cave that resemble where they would have been in the stories themselves (coolest).

After exploring the cave and villa, we hit the beach for a couple hours. The waves were high and it was windy but I was content to lie on the beach and take a walk and generally revel in the fact that I was in Italy, at the beach, in late September.

In other news, we’ve made friends with more of the locals. Some of the guys who are students at the engineering school where our classes are housed (there are only 3 girls) and our wine lady, whose name is Anna, and she got married last Saturday and even saved some candied almonds for us. We’ve also befriended a bunch of the guys who cook and bus and serve at a really good restaurant in town. We ate at their restaurant last night, it was kind of expensive but totally worth it for fresh tagliatelle with broccoli sauce, salmon with mushrooms, and tiramisu. They cut us 24 euro off the bill but we paid the whole thing, seeing as they had given us a free plate of tiramisu and potatoes.

I’m having a wonderful time but exams are next week and I’m making study guides and memorizing slides, etc. I’d love to hear how you all are doing. Baci grossi!

Oh yeah, and it took us about 4 hours to get there by bus, that’s why the ride was “longa…”

Yesterday we went on our first field trip to Rome. We took a bus and left at 7:30 am and didn’t get there until 10 because of morning traffic, I guess…I found it odd that the driver didn’t speed, because when I drove up with Maddalena and Pompeo it took us just an hour…maybe the driver was just odd. In any case, we saw the Mausoleum of Augustus, which was designed about 20 years before his death.

We also got to see the Ara Pacis Augustae, which until recently had been closed, apparently. Valentine is also retiring, so his collection of a lot of dresses, etc. was up as well…that was kind of bizarre because they were presented on all these gold mannequins with long freakish necks and no faces. Anyway, the Ara Pacis is amazing…it’s a totally propagandistic altar but whatever, it’s beautiful and I’ve studied it countless times so to see it in person was great.

We went to Piazza Navona, which has a beautiful fountain in the middle designed by Bernini…also known as the fuontain where someone drowned (or fake-drowned) in Angels & Demons. Lunch, and then the Pantheon, and then a few Baroque churches…The Baroque churchezs were beautiful, and we got to see the famous Caravaggio paintings of St. Matthew. A.Maz.Ing. We made it home around 7ish; it took us an hour to get out of Rome alone, which I thought was ridiculous but the traffic was horrendous, and as we all know, the Italians don’t seem to believe in traffic regulation or laws.

Tomorrow morning me and a few other gals are heading to Tuscany, more specifically Lucca and probably Viareggio or, if we’re ambitious, Forte dei Marmi, which are both gorgeous beaches. I’ll be out of touch until Sunday afternoon, but I hope all is well and I miss you all dearly.