Angie + Ravenna (!) + Pisa #2

In my last blog you learned that I went to Rome to visit Angela. This past weekend (November 16-18) she came to Florence to visit me!

On Friday Angie went around Florence by herself. (It was a make-up day from the Bosnia trip for me.) She had a very productive day! Good job Ange! Since it’s the off-season, the lines and such around Florence are a lot shorter for the major landmarks. I like to call the things to see landmarks, not “tourist attractions.” My management and operations classes (same teacher, my devoted blog readers will remember that I do not like the professor) had a field trip. The field trip was to a winery to see the operations of making wine and olive oil. Also for the management class we were supposed to learn the organizational hierarchy of the winery. The tour of the wine production would have been really fun if my professor had not been there. We also had a wine tasting afterward, which was sort of awkward as a school activity. We only got to sample 2 types of wine and then some olive oil. The wine and oil were pretty good, but I was antsy to get back into town and meet back up with Angie.

Friday night Professor Batterman, one of the Italian teachers, organized a Tuscan dinner at a restaurant downtown. About 35 people from school went to the dinner and I was able to take Angie with me, so she got to experience Tuscan food and wine. I was excited for the dinner because I took it as an opportunity to wear the new shoes I bought this week. They are so cute! Thanks so much to my Mom for letting me buy shoes!! I love shoes!!

At dinner:

After dinner I showed Angie some Florence night life. But we couldn’t have too much fun because we had to get up super early in the morning…

Day Trip to Ravenna:

Professor Batterman and Student Life offered a day trip to Ravenna to see the mosaics from when Ravenna was capital of the Eastern Empire as a weekend activity. Ravenna wasn’t capital of Byzantium for very long though. Constantinople (now Istanbul) became capital, but they continued to make amazing mosaics in Ravenna.

The trip started at 6:45am when we had to meet at the train station. That is really early. We took a one car train and headed northeast to Ravenna. It was about a 3 hour train ride. In Ravenna we had a guide to show us around to the churches and explain the mosaics to us. They were amazing! San Vitale has the famous mosaics of Emperor Justinian and his wife Theodora, they are on covers of books a lot and I have seen those in history and art classes. Being able to see in person all the things I’ve only seen slides of is just incredible!

Also in Ravenna we saw the tomb of Dante. I’ve been learning a lot about Dante and the characters in The Comedy that I really feel like I should read it. Being a Florentine, Dante put a lot of people I’ve learned about in my Intro to Florence class in Hell

Theodora:

Justinian:

On the way home from Ravenna, the train had a switchover in Faenza, a city famous for ceramics. We had some time to walk around Faenza and the ceramic stores had really beautiful things, but way out of my price range! I could only admire from afar.

Back in Florence I took Angie to get a kebab for dinner. For some reason nearly everyone at my school has become practically obsessed with kebabs. They are not food on a stick, but a wrap. I get chicken, lettuce, cabbage, onion, humus, spicy sauce, and yogurt sauce; everything but tomato. Its only 4€, delicious and really filling. Most of us get them every Sunday when we get back to Florence from traveling.

Sunday we again were up early! Angie made appointment at the Uffizi (best museum in Florence) for 9:45am and wanted to see the Medici chapels before that. We got the Medici Chapels right at 8:15am when it opened. We used a Rick Steeves guide book to point out all the things to see in there. The Rick Steeves books are good, but when you use them you have to remember that it’s a travel book and he doesn’t have expertise in art or history. So there’s always much more to the story than Rick Steeves tells you. Nevertheless, it was pretty cool to see all the artwork created for Medici tombs. But that’s the Medici for you!

The Uffizi was AMAZING! It has so much great artwork, especially from the Renaissance to see. I bought the guidebook to the Uffizi for 16€ and I almost bought one for 29€ because it had slightly bigger pictures. There was another book I really wanted but I decided it was too expensive and I might be able to find it online for cheaper. (Note I did find it on Amazon and Amazon UK, but I don’t know how that works exactly.)

I took Angie to Vivoli’s for gelato. Most people say Vivoli’s is their favorite gelato. But mine is Vestri’s. My room mate and I found Vestri’s not too long ago. It’s not a real gelato place, but a chocolate shop. Vestri’s gelato was basically the best thing that’s ever been in my mouth. Vestri’s doesn’t have very extensive hours, making it difficult to get the gelato. Anyways, Angie had the 2^nd best gelato in Florence.

We headed over to the train station to go to Pisa for the afternoon. Ange wanted to complete her life goal of visiting the leaning tower of Pisa. We even paid the 15€ to climb it. When we first stepped into the tower I took me off balance! The floor had quite a tilt! There was a cool view of Pisa from the top, it’s a bigger city than I had thought! We also explored the Pisa Cathedral. It is quite big and the crest of the Medici family is everywhere! It was also interesting for me because the cathedral had both Gothic (pointed) arches and Romanesque (rounded) arches.

Me on top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa!

We got back to the train station and Angie took a train to Rome and I took one back to Florence. See you in April Angie Pie!