19-20th Cinque Terre
24-27th Elba
October is going to be a busy month. So much more planning to do! But for now I'll just update my blog.
Yesterday, for my sociology class we went to the the Museo degli Argenti in the Palazz Pitti. It was incredible. The museum exhibited the main rooms of the Palazzo (which was owned by the Medici family) and a collection of gorgeous decorative and utilitarian objects. The walls in the large halls were unbelievable. They were compltely covered in frescoes which were painted to make it seems as though the space all around you was endlss. We kept looking around trying to figure out if the balcony painted on the wall was actually a balcony or just a flat surface. It was unreal. The photo below is one of the rooms, but it really doesn't do the place justice. You'll just have to come visit me and see it for yourself...
The rest of the museum had the most ornate jewelry (my mom would love seeing it), ivory carving, gold platters and, my favorite, wine goblets made of massive conch shells. Incredible! I kept trying to guess how much I could buy them for...let's just say I don't have enough money.
So that was yesterday and today for my Early Masters of Italian Renaissance Painting course we meet at Santa Croce to spend the class period. I was very happy cause I live less than 5 min from Santa Croce so I didn't have to wake up too early. The church doesn't open until 10 and class started at 9 so our professor walked us around the area pointing out monuments (michelangelo's house) and explained the layout and architecture of the surroundings. So interesting! The church was amazing inside. Michelangelo, Galileo and Machiavelli (to name a few) are all burried there. There are sculptures from Donatello and painting by Cimabue and Giotto. A lot of it was covered in scalfolding because of restoration but we were able to see what we wanted to see: Giotto's frescoes in the Bardi and Peruzzi chapels. They were impressive to say the least. I definitely need to go back there because there was a lot I missed. 2 hours and 45 min is definitely not enough time!
The last thing to report is about the neighbors. Until yesterday, we had yet to meet our neighbors. We had all these plans to leave a note in Italian with a bottle of wine to introduce ourselves or to bake a cake (even though we have no oven) and give it to them. But of course that fell through and we hadn't met them. But yesterday we were sitting in our kitchen and our door bell goes off. A middle-aged Italian man walks in towards our window, rumbling off some words (in Italian of course)while eating a cracker. Using the little Italian that I know, along with his basic pantomiming, I figured out that he wants us to keep our shutters closed so the pigeons don't sit on them and poop on his clothes hanging below. He went to the window, shook off the pigeons, dropped some crumbs on the floor and left. That's it. No, ciao! Mi Chiamo Luigi, piacere! (hi, mi name is luigi, nice to meet you). Nothing. Then tonight we went back to the apartment the same time as the wife and son and all the wife said was to go upstairs and close our shutters that minute because of the pigeons. Let's just say they're not the nicest neighbors. Non mi piaccono! We want our shutters open so we can get light in our apartment. So annoying.
That's my update...on to work. I need to finish everything for next week before leaving for Cinque Terre on saturday! A domani!
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