Wednesday=More Touring of Orvieto. On the bright side, this was an actual organized tour with guides and everything. We were split into three groups and toured three places: the Cathedral, Underground Orvieto, and the Clock Tower.
First, the Cathedral:
Frescas in the chapel
Lorene, the other LDS girl on the trip, pointed this out to me. This is the fourth pillar of the Cathedral. Each pillar tells some sort of religious story. Lorene pointed out that this pillar looks like the three degrees of heaven and then the spirit world at the bottom! She totally blew my mind. It's interesting to see similarities between Catholicism and Mormonism.
Second, underground Orvieto (very humid)
Olive press to make olive oil
This was used to bring water up to the people of Orvieto (there is no water source since they are up on a cliff). People had to climb down 40+ meters to bring back water for the rest of the society. It's pretty dark down there and a tight space, does not sound like a fun job to me at all.
When the people of Orvieto lived underground, they enjoyed housing and raising pigeons, another job I would not particularly enjoy.
After the underground orvieto tour there was a siesta to eat lunch and take a nap before we went back for the final tour.
Last, the Clock Tour
It only took almost 200 steps and the sacrifice of your thighs to make it to the top of the clock tower, but it is totally worth it, the view is magnificent! While we were up on top the bell rang and pretty much made everyone go deaf.
After touring we did our own exploring/worked on our projects for photojournalism.
We went to a garden and I found this boy trying to catch fish out of a pond
Some ladies sketching
Then we went over to the soccer field and found lots of people both Italian and American
These kids loves beating each other up in front of the camera haha
This kid loved showing off his futbol skills
Aaren is one fierce futbol player
This poor kid was asking for a lot of trouble with his older friends
Headlock for not scoring a goal
For dinner Brandi and I went to a restaurant near our house, it was awesome because we got a discount for being students and we got a punch card. Nothing cooler than that... except wait... THEY HAD BURGERS AND FRIES! And they were actually delicious. Don't even get me started on how good the ketchup here is too... When I am in America I ONLY eat Heinz, but the stuff here definitely tops it. Brandi got a calzone and it was HUUUUGE!
Thursday May 28th
I got to sleep in on Thursday!!! It was so glorious.
In the morning/late morning we went to the Farmers Market that is held every Thursday and Saturday. I was hoping for some sweet deals on some clothes, but the selection wasn't really my style, but they were pretty cheap. I didn't look too much at the food, but that's my goal for next week!
After the farmers market we went to a cafe for lunch. I got another salami panini, but this was the best one I have had yet, the cheese was melted and oh so delicious. AND they had red orange juice (also known as blood orange in the States) so that made me really happy!
Right before we went to the cafe a man stopped us to try and sell us selfie sticks (they are seriously sold everywhere in Italy) but we declined. Then he told us that he would give us bracelets and each one means something different like luck, love or money. He insisted that he gave us one, he wouldn't take no for an answer. He told us that they were free because you cannot buy luck so we accepted. Then of course after he put the bracelets on our wrists he asked for an offering... sneaky sneaky.
So Thursday is the day of my digital photography class. The class is three hours long if you recall and only once a week... it's pretty dreadful. The material so far if a lot of review for me so it's kind of really boring, but I have hope that it will get better. It's weird to think about it though, I am only going to have to suffer through a three hour class 5 times.... maybe that's only weird to me, but still! On the bright side, our prof does give us a 20 minute break at the half way mark, and a 20 minute break on Thursday for me meant breaking off a piece of that Kit Kat bar ;)
After class my roommates and I had quite the conundrum. We wanted to wash our clothes for the weekend because we were going to Milan. We packed all our clothes into this teeny tiny washing machine and then we couldn't get it to work! We tried just about everything and asked just about everyone. I came to the conclusion the problem had to do with a button that was stuck, and my conclusion was confirmed when Alba came to our apartment today to fix it. Thankfully, she was able to fix the button and now that washing machine works again and we will be able to wash our clothes upon our return to Orvieto. Oh super fun fact: drying machines are non existent, everyone hang drys everything. That's quite the adjustment for me considering I never hang dry anything, even when I am supposed to.
Also, I cannot get over how awful my hair color is right now... remember how dark I dyed it in December? Something is wrong with my head.
For dinner we went to a Chinese restaurant near our apartment. I was kind of nervous about how the Chinese food would be here, but I had no reason to be, it was delicious! I got sweet and sour chicken. My only critique is that is was crunchy enough... if that makes any sense. With my meal I got a fanta, and the fanta here is not nearly has artificial as it is in the states, just look at the color!
After dinner we decided to be rebellious.
Earlier in the day we got an email from Alba saying:
"Dear Students (and faculty),
Thursday night at 9:00 p.m. In piazza della Repubblica there will be a political meeting organised by the Lega Nord political party for the forthcoming Sundayregional elections and the leader Matteo Salvini is expected to participate. Since in other towns and cities there have been demonstrations against him I would suggest that you keep away from that square and the surrounding area. You may also note that there will be a stronger police control on the entire city.
Have a good day.
Claudio"
Well that email to us photojournalism students meant great pictures. Turns out there were no violent demonstrations so it wasn't very exciting. But it was fun to be there and feel like real photojournalists. Here are just a few of the hundreds of pictures I took lol
This one is my favorite
This is Alex. He is in mine and Brandi's photojournalism class and he's always prepared with all his equipment, like a pro.
We woke up bright and early on Friday morning to catch our train to Milan. We hit quite the road block before even leaving Orvieto.
So after my roommates and I were ready to go, we met our journalism friend, Danielle, at the clock tower (south side) so we could walk together to the cable car (north side). Then ride the cable car down to the train station. After quite the hike with all our stuff to the cable car station we find out that the station doesn't even open until ten minutes after our train leaves! To my knowledge at the time, I thought the cable car or an actual car were the only things that could take you down to the bottom of the cliff to the bus station (walking was a very dangerous and a very time consuming option). We were freaking out so we called Alba, and she said we could catch a bus down to the train station at the Cathedral and make it ten minutes before the train leaves. The Cathedral is near the clock tower. So we hiked back up to the cathedral and found some friends, who were leaving to go to the Almalfi Coast, along the way to spread the news about the cable car situation. Well we made it to the Cathedral on time but we were so tired from carrying our stuff all over the city, so we sat down at a cafe until the bus arrived. The bus arrived one minute early and got us down to the train station one minute early too (wooohoooo). So thankfully we made it to the train on time.
Our first train took us to Florence, then we had an hour long stop there. We went to a small cafe, a McDonalds and a Burger King while we were there. I really just wanted some chicken nuggets but McDonalds wouldn't make them for me, so I went to Burger King and got some chicken fries which were just as satisfying.
Then we caught our speed train to Milan! Our first train was open seating so the four of us got to sit together. But the second train was assigned seats so since Danielle II bought her tickets after my roommates and I bought ares, she didn't sit with us, but she wasn't very far. The fast train in Italy goes so freaking fast, which makes sense why they call it the fast train. We got to Milan in no time at all.
When we arrived in Milan we went to go find our AirBnB, which was thankfully very close to the train station. Our landlord person was really nice, but seemed really nervous when he was talking to us, I guess Americans are very intimidating. The place is very cute and perfect for our short weekend here in Milan.
This random brick structure is absolutely necessary
After we all settled in, it was time for some lunch! We went to this restaurant we found while wandering the streets. I got a four cheese pizza, which had to very strange organisms in the middle of it. Brandi thinks they were artichoke hearts or something... I don't know, I didn't eat it, and no one wanted to try it. Besides the mysterious organism, the pizza was delicious!
After lunch we walked a mile to this beautiful park full of people tanning, sleeping, making out, playing with their dogs, walking with their wolves (yes, I really did see a guy walking his wolves, he had 3), reading, drawing and a lot of other cool stuff. This was the perfect place to take pictures for our photojournalism classes, and a perfect place to take pictures of ourselves too:
After the park we walked probably another mile to Corso Buenos Aires (or something like that), it's the main shopping mall here in Milan. TONS of stores! We definitely shopped until we dropped... literally I thought my legs were going to collapse because of how much walking we did. I bought my first souvenir on this street (only one because the stores are very fancy and very expensive), so I was pretty excited about that. I really just loved being in the atmosphere of such amazing shopping.
Fossil was a must see for me
After shopping we made a big loop back to our place for a little siesta. I was able to facetime my mom, so that made me really happy! Everyone else took a nap, but I just updated social media.
After the siesta we went to dinner at this nice place down the street from our apartment. They gave us free champagne (I declined, don't worry), free bread and free bruschetta... but they forgot to give me my sprite... so there's that. I actually got spaghetti and it was really good, although I think I like it more in American where it's cooked a lot more instead of al dente.
Then we all came home, pretty exhausted from traveling and a lot of walking. We watched Phineas and Ferb in Italian (subtitles are impossible to turn on around hear) and then went to sleep!
Saturday May 30th
The walls in our AirBnB are so thin!! It was quite terrifying because people would be in their apartments or in the hallway and it would sound like they were in our place! I got up multiple times just to make sure no one was in here. It took me awhile to fall asleep because of it, but once I did I slept pretty soundly despite only have one pillow (I always sleep with at least 3) and the blankets feeling like paper.
We were all exhausted on Friday so we decided to sleep in on Saturday. We left our place around 11:30 and went to go get smoothies down the street and then made our way to downtown Milan to see the gothic Cathedral!
Our choice of transportation was the underground metro, and we traveled like champs! S/O to Danielle Z for being the real MVP when it comes to navigation.
As we were walking up the stairs from the metro we saw the beautiful Duomo Milano! and then we saw a million vendors trying to sell us selfie sticks and more luck bracelets... one guy threw a bracelet at me and then grabbed me to tie it on my wrist, but since he was so forceful I told him I didn't have any cash or change on me and then walked away.
As we were taking pictures of the Duomo (Duomo is Cathedral in Italian btw, I go back and forth on which to use) a man came up to Brandi and put bird feed in her hand and pigeons attacked her hand, then both the Danielle's got some bird feed too. I am so not into birds and I am not brave like they are, so I just took the pictures, their faces in some of them are priceless!
After playing with pigeons we went and bought tickets to go to the Duomo and the Duomo museum. This duomo has a very strict dress code, no shoulders showing and no knees. Brandi and Danielle F both wore rompers because it's pretty hot here, and then brought pants to wear over their rompers when they went inside. Brandi had some intense pattern mixing, it was pretty hilarious.
I am so obsessed with this duomo, you have no idea! I love all the spikes and all the statues and the stain glass, it's just so gorgeous!
After we went through the duomo, we went to the museum. I was so amazed by all the statues in the museum and how they all used to be on the duomo or inside but were later replaced. Just thousands and thousands of statues. Blows my mind!
Then we went to lunch. We chose a place based on one thing. When we were walking we saw that they had gelato outside. Earlier in the day when we were drinking our smoothies we were talking about how good mango gelato would be, and kind of how weird it is that we haven't seen any yet (we have been to many gelato shops just in one week). Well we walk up to the restaurant and sure enough, there it was, the glorious and heavenly mango gelato. So we decided to eat there and afterwards get some gelato for dessert.
We went down the road with lots of shops on them and along the way we saw lots of street performers, it was awesome! Perfect photos for my first photojournalism project.
After some shopping (lol I only bought one thing.... a key chain) we walked back towards to Duomo and down to the metro station and made our way back home for a siesta. Once again, no nap for me, but I was able to finish editing all my photos. I can easily fall behind and my pictures suffer if I do, so I always try to stay on top of it!
During the siesta I watched MTV music, where they play mostly American songs, a few Spanish songs, and maybe two Italian songs... but there's really only like 15 songs and then they are all repeated.
After the siesta we went to dinner. To find a restaurant we just choose a street to walk down and choose a random restaurant. Luckily 98% of the restaurants here post their menus outside their doors so we at least know what we are getting into. We chose a restaurant that had a sign ALL ITALIAN FOOD, so it seemed legit. I got gnocci with gorgonzola, and it was mmmm mmmmmm sooo good! My favorite dish so far, maybe second behind those yummy salami paninis.
Then we really dove into the Italian culture and went to bar new york so Brandi and Danielle could get a drink! I guess they have a really interesting bathroom here? Danielle was saying in one of the stalls there was no toilet... just a hole.... that would terrify me.
If you can't tell already, I am doing great here and I have become much more comfortable. Amazing that I feel like I could travel the whole country with my girls, only after one week of being here! Things are really starting to pick up now too. Next Wednesday I am going to Rome, specifically the Vatican, then on Friday I am going to Siena then to a neighboring city with a beach! It's going to be another great week here in Italy!
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