The Almafi Coast

Hi from scorching Roma! Sorry I haven't written in a while, but this website was acting really funny. In the two weeks (ah!) that I haven't updated, I have seen a lot! I've seen breathtaking views, a lot of beaches, and I have also had an awful bout with food poisoning: No matter HOW GOOD you think it will taste, no matter HOW HUNGRY you are and no matter HOW BADLY you think you want it...DO NOT EAT MCDONALDS IN PARIS AT MIDNIGHT!


The Almafi Coast

The Almafi Coast is an amazing little place that I never thought I'd have the pleasure of witnessing in my lifetime. It is the coast just south of Naples, where my grandpa is from. We stayed at Seven Hostel, in Sorrento...a brand new hostel which was nicer than 90% of the hotels I've stayed in.

Friday, we went to the ancient town of Pompeii. Pompeii was a rather upper-class neighborhood that was completely buried in 79 AD when Mount Vesuvius erupted over a span of 2 days. Volcanic ash rained down and buried everyone and everything in the town. In the 1700's, as workers were digging irrigation canals through what they thought were hills, they found it. The place is kept in such good condition, all things considered. IT'S OVER 2000 YEARS OLD!!!!! The knowledge they have about each building and place is truly astonishing. We saw a bakery, winery, brothel, shops, spa, small houses, summer homes, winter homes...and that was only one tiny part of the town.

old town courthouse and town center

Here's our tour guide, Antonio. He knew EVERYTHING about this place, and about a lot of things..



cast of a person from 79 AD. archeologists pumped cement for the cast into the ground before removing the bodies to make sure they didn't break. didn't he have nice teeth?


a picture inside the brothel. let's just say this is the most tame of all of the pictures..


down the road from the brothel, pointing in its direction. this is not made up.

courtyard of a home..


it was hard to get a picture because of the sun..but this is a mosaic at the entrance of a home that reads "Attenti al cane"-"Beware of Dog"


Pompeii, Mount Vesuvius in the back ground

Later that day, we traveled down the road to Mount Vesuvius. It is the only volcano on the European mainland to have erupted in the last hundred years (1944). Basically, it can erupt at any moment. Thankfully, we asked and found out that they would know at least a week ahead of time. We climbed to the top...

us at the bottom...

view of Naples

and after lots of pain....we made it!!! me and my roommate Jess
inside of the volcano



(photo courtesy of Jake Tompkins)



Saturday we went to the isle of Capri! This was my absolute favorite place I have been so far. My dad said, "Erica, you have GOT to get to Capri." And he was not joking.

We took a boat from Sorrento to Capri. In the middle of the Mediterranean, the water is a royal blue. Closer to the coast, its a turquoise like nothing you've ever seen (unless you have been to Bermuda, apparently.) Before we pulled up to the coast, however, we went to the Blue Grotto. It is exactly what it sounds like, except 100 times better. It is a cave where the sunlight from the outside illuminates the water and the cave walls a surreal blue color. In order to get inside, one must take a tiny row boat. Everyone in the boat must lie down, or your head will get taken off by the cave entrance. The man driving the boat uses the chain attached to the entrance to hoist the boat inside, doing an acrobatic, matrix-like move so he himself doesn't kill himself on the cave entrance, either. Not only would it hurt, but you simply would not be able to get into the cave considering the entrance is probably..3 feet tall.


you can see a boat going under the entrance towards the right near the stairs, behind the man standing on a boat (photo courtesy of Jake Tompkins)





(photos courtesy of Melissa Marsili)

I almost didn't even do these pictures, because pictures ruin it and don't even do justice..

My friends and I wanted nothing more than to lie on the beach...so instead of hiking up to the top of Capri (which I'm sure was amazing), we decided to rest our feet for the day, and relax on the first tiny, perfect beach we set our eyes on. I guess all that means is that I will have to come back to Capri one day. As they say... "You will want to come back to Capri"


my view from the beach





Sunday, we went to Positano, which is another beach town on the coast. It was also beautiful here! Yet again, we stayed on the beach for most of the day...






Stay tuned for Paris!

<3, Erica

week one in roma

greetings from roma! as a request from carly i will update more often. i'm so mad because my blogger.com doesn't work sometimes and won't let me upload pictures :/ , but i'll update anyway, any hopefully it won't be too boring ;) haha! i'll edit in pictures in later!


Wednesday: Colosseum for art history

Paolo walked us around the historical district of Rome. We looked at columns and it was fantastic. I'm pretty sure any time spent with Paolo is fantastic "oh, the pill-AS-ters!" He loves marble on buildings ("Oh, theese marble eez fantastic!") but not ugly white marble like on the building in Venice Square. Don't worry, many more Paolo stories to come

Thursday: Villa Borghese for sketching class

This place was beautiful! We went to the lake in the Villa Borghese, which is an emormous public park right in the center of Rome, kind of like Central Park or Fairmount Park. We walked up to the lake and started to sketch. I also got my first cappachino, a suggestion from my teacher, and it was phenomenal :)

Friday: Hadrian's Villa and Villa D'Este in Tivoli

Hadrian's Villa is the remains of the town Emperor Hadrian had built for himself in the 2nd century. The architechture is just amazing. The fact that these walls, buildings, pools, and floors are still suriviving today? It completely blows my mind. Leonardo da Vinci used to come here to sketch and learn. AND SO DID I!!! THAT BLOWS MY MIND! Paolo had us sit by the water while he read us an excerpt from the book "Memoirs of Hadrian", where the author did 20 years of research to write the book as if she were Hadrian. We learned that Hadrian was an intellectual. He was very wise and was very in-tune with nature and the human exsistence.

Villa D'Este is a garden of over 200 fountains made for Cardinal D'Este in 1560. He was the grandson of a Pope. Popes can have kids?! Apparently. Paolo informed us that there was a lotta incest and crazy stuff goin on in the family. Cardinal's mom was Lucrezia Borgia..and let's just say she got around. Haha, but the fountains are gorgeous and the whole garden is just so fascinating, every corner you turn there are more fountains. It is based after Hadrian's Villa which is right down the hill, and even some statues are stolen from there.

me and my professor paolo!!!!!!!

Saturday: Ostia

We went to the beach! And the best part is, we took 3 ways of public for transportation...for 1 EURO!!! So cheap and amazing! It was about 45 minutes away, and the weather was absolutely perfect...it was breezy and not hot...I fell asleep instantly. However, there were fighter planes practicing or something and they were VERY LOUD! Somehow..I still managed to sleep... :)

Sunday: Pantheon mass for Pentecost

Dream come true. Ever since I have learned about it, the Pantheon has been one of my favorite buildings that I only wished I could see in person. And now I have. Not only have I seen it, but I have attended mass there and an amazing one at that. For Pentecost, rose pedals are dropped through the center oculus to represent the Holy Spirit making its appearance. The oculus is the hole in the center of the ceiling that lets the light shine through. In Roman times, this was the hole that represents all Gods shining through. The Catholic church made this into church...they didn't want to destroy the beautiful building, but they wanted to make it Catholic since it was a multi-god worship place, and to keep it standing without turning it into a church would be "sacreligious". Either way, it is a beautiful, beautiful building with an even more beautiful mass. It was amazing! At the end, rose pedals just kept falling down then we got to go to the center and just BE in the rose pedals..


We then walked around Rome, got a bite to eat, got some gelato, saw some of the national bike race.. Lance Armstrong was racing, but we would have had to wait 2 1/2 hours to see him and our feet hurt :/ Overall it was a great day!

And that sums up my first full week in Rome!!!!!!!!!!!!

first day of classes...

i have two classes...and neither of them meet in the classroom...!!!!!!!!!!! excursions all over rome all the time. amazing. i am so excited. tomorrow we meet at the colloseum, and explore some ruins. i never thought i could say that my class was just meeting up at, you know, THE COLLOSEUM?!!?!?!?!

by the way, we went to see if we could hear andrea bocelli last night at the colloseum.. but we missed it. oh well, i walked out of a subway station and the first thing i saw was THE COLLOSEUM......i think that'll do.

there was a young guy playing the accordion on the subway today...it was almost like a gondola. he was awesome and cute. the subway is SO MUCH NICER AND BETTER than the broad street line. there is a treno every 3 minutes and its big and wide and air conditioned and clean. THEN we switched over to the B line. ....that is definitely the broad street line of roma. graffiti all over, but i have to admit, it looks awesome...




my art history professor is the only italian teacher at temple rome. his name is paolo and he is awesome. funny things he said today include:
-"this will make one homosexual" (referring to a statue of a naked man with his genitals facing the audience"
-(referring to St. Mark's Church and Venice in general) "i think there should be an exam to enter this place, I met a man in Houston, Houston..YUCK...he said 'Venice, it was too stinky', I wanted to kill this man..."
-(also referring to Venice) "if you are a person with personal troubles...you cannot truly appreciate art...you must get rid of these personal troubles first"
-(referring to a picture of a half naked man) "this is....so sexy....he is like a jim morrison...."
-"we have a 15 minute sort of unspoken law here in Italy.. a professor will not show up to class until 15 mninutes after it is supposed to meet. and sometimes we get lazy and that can be 30 minutes, 45 minutes..."





also, my sketch professor, she is so nice too. as we leave the classroom we met in for about..10 minutes, to walk to the art store and the piazza de popolo to draw, she just says, "does anyone want to stop for coffee?"

she is an "ex-pat" or ex-patriot who was in the temple rome program as a junior 30 years ago, and never went back to the US.

also, a fun fact about coffee here...there is no such thing as take out. italians drink their coffee at the bar (cafe) in regular cups. they chill and socialize in the morning while they drink their coffee, then they finish and go on their way. if by any chance they do take it to go, its because they need a way to take it to their place of work. then once they get there, they sit and enjoy it. italy is a place that is relaxed, not fast-paced like the cities in america. they are laid-back and enjoy life. it is guarenteed to make you live a longer, happier life. i am IN!



--<3

pictures!

here are only a few pictures of this amazing experience so far...

view from my balcony

on my walk to school...looks pretty normal, right?

looking at Temple University Rome from across the Tiber river

the Spanish Steps... my favorite hang out place so far

me in front of the Trevi fountain!! my FAVORITE so far!!

the medieval town of Todi in Umbria

Todi, how adorable is this?

the view of the countryside from Todi

kissesss!

in front of our apartment building :)

much, much, MUCH more to come..

until next time..... <3

mercato trionfale

Today we went to the market to buy some groceries. The Mercato Trionfale is the largest open air market in Rome, and is right down the street. It is basically the exact same as the Reading Terminal market, except not all in doors, and way sweet. The fruits and breads are so fresh its amazing. We got three bottles of wine for 5 euro... and the people are sooo nice. I was eating a peach as we shopped and a man asked me how it was as he was moving crates around, I totally caught on to it! So proud. I told him "e squisito!!" which means "its delicious!"

Then we went to the real supermarket to get the rest..we are making our first geuine Italian dinner tonight! Shopping has never been so fun... one thing that amazed me is that their soda section (which is right next to the beer) is about 1/4 as big as ours (as is their beer, or 1/35 of the distributor). Their wine section is about the size of our soda section...

Last night, we went to the Old Bridge Gelateria right across from the Vatican. Let's just say this is almost the Geno's/Pat's of Rome. The line was long but didn't take forever. The young guy who worked their spoke perfect English. He asked where we were from, and when we told him Philadelphia, he was said "Ohh!! Eagles!" and most of us were like "booo but yeahh" and he was like "fly eagles fly!! fly eagles fly, on the way to victory!" and we corrected him by telling him the "road" to victory, only I don't even know if I knew that.. Also, he asked what part of Philly we were from, and when we said North Philly, his only replied was, "Ohhh ghettoo!!"

ps: jess is calling her nun relative right now...private tour of the vatican?

--erica

day 2

it's 4 am and i cannot fall asleep..probably because of the 3 hour nap i took once we got back from our walking tour of rome, around the temple campus. oops. but that's okay, because now i can BLOG.

rome is amazing, just like i knew it would be. a city, but unlike anything i have ever seen. the chaos of a city, mixed in with the simplicity of life and the ancient buildings that have stood for thousands of years. it is only day 2 and i am already a nerd for everything.

i ate chocolate gelato today...and i thought of you carly. thought you deserved a special shout out because you said you would check this daily :) ...at least someone's reading it..



Rome is also different then i thought it would be. i have heard that italians are rude (i'm not rude? haha), that they stare at you in disapproval, that they are easily frustrated with you, etc. this has not been the case at all. granted, i have only been here for two days, but i have gotten no stares and no disapproval (that i know of). everyone has been really nice, and mostly everyone speaks english. when you try to speak italian, they mostly just speak english back to you. at the gelato shop, my roommate reilly was in this situation and said, "can't you just let me try!!!!" in return the man behind the counter gave her a sample of gelato.....she meant try to speak italian. but hey, she got free gelato. PS: gelato flavor: frutti di bosco may be one of the best things i've ever had. its like black raspberry, only even more amazing...


so once my blogger.com decides to behave and not be weird i will be posting pictures. my nikon D40 is amazing so far. you can just check my facebook, because despite my plans to not put them all up, i am pretty sure i'm going to anyway. it's addicting..




tomorrow we go to the hilltown of todi to have a traditional meal and explore the countryside. wine is apparently a must. but we were warned not to have too much, or we might puke on the bumpy ride home. sweet. i have to wake up in 3 hours. wonder how long the ride will be...

day 1

black feet. square pizza. a huge balcony. sitting on the spanish steps for hours. rome has begun.... pictures tomorrow ... stay tuned ....



<3 *

pre-roma

So, I will be in Italia in 3 days.. and I cannot believe it. I'm sure I will read this post in a week and see how clueless I am. But being the procrastinator I am.. I haven't started packing. I should go do that.. I'm freaking out with packing but I know once I get there, it won't even matter. I will be posting tons of pictures with my amazing new camera! Ah I cannot wait..
I'll miss everyone!
-Er