Since I last wrote a few exciting things have happened! For art history class on the 11th we looked at work by both Boromini and Bernini! All of it was absolutely amazing but by far my favorite thing we saw that week was the Ecstasy of St. Teresa. I had been looking forward to seeing this since last semester when it was part of our last art history class. It certainly didn't let me down. It was absolutely incredible! The craftsmanship was unbelievable and it was very moving. Loved every minute of looking at it and took far too many pictures :)
The Saturday following this day we departed for our quick two day trip to Florence!! We were able to take a tour of an old medieval tower which used to be apartments and is now its own museum exhibition. It was amazing to see all the artwork and furniture in real life that we had learned about last semester! The detailing of the artwork was indescribable and the furniture was absolutely beautiful. We then headed off for the markets, both the food market and the leather market! We headed first to the food market to grab some lunch. Richard, MK, Sally and I split 3 different dishes. All three were good considering we tried new things such as boar and kidney! Both surprised me in being good haha
We then headed out for a tour with Jody and Pia, our instructors. They showed us an amazing chapel of the Medici family, sculptures by Michelangelo, amazing architecture, the duomo of the city, and the Faragamo museum! Which is a museum of shoes designed by Faragmo. I wanted them all! Of course right?? After they showed us around for a bit, we were on our own until group dinner that night. We headed back up to the leather market to do some shopping! Leather was bought all around :) most people bought something from the market and was excited to share with everyone else.
That night we all met up for dinner where we were served samples of a bunch of different items on the menu. Another interesting thing we tried was liver. That was surprising good too! Weird right? My favorite though was the spicy spaghetti that we had! It was super delicious! (Dad and Austin you would've loved it! Mom, not so much :p) After the satisfying meal we headed to our hostel for the night. The hostel was a little sketchy and it felt like we were in a prison. And the breakfast wasn't so good. But we survived the night and the next morning headed for the Uffizi museum.
The Uffizi museum holds hundreds and hundreds of paintings and sculptures by some of the most famous artists in the world such as Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Rafael, etc. It was incredible!! We unfortunately didn't have enough time to stay there long enough to see everything. After the museum we had an hour or so on our own until we departed to Tuscany for wine tasting!
We arrived in Tuscany and were taken on a tour of the vineyard and then were sat down for a small meal and wine tasting! It was so adorable! The tour guide had his son helping him out who was adorable and they had three dogs there which were oh so loveable :) Overall, it was a fantastic weekend trip!
We then went back to our routine of classes every week. For art history this past week we saw a bunch of paintings by Caravaggio! He is a very interesting painter and I very much enjoyed analyzing his work! He puts a different twist on things that makes you think. He also almost always has a self portrait in his work portraying himself as the bad guy, not the good guy.
Finally, to top of everything this weekend, on Saturday we took a day trip to Perugia for the Chocolate Festival! We walked out of the train station upon arriving, and saw the Choco-Train! It was so adorable and we took that to the city center of Perugia to the location of the Chocolate festival. Once we got there, we grabbed some lunch and wandered the festival. We ended up buying a chocolate card which cost 5 euro. This card had different tent names on it and when you when to each tent on the card they would give you a free sample of something! It was awesome and totally worth it!! All the chocolate :) And of course we couldn't leave without buying some haha it made for a great day trip. I would definitely go back one day!
It has been go go go here and so much has been happening it's been great! It's already the end of October! Home in 2 months and 2 days! Ciao for now!
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