Happy New Year!

Buon Anno, tutti! I hope you all had fantastic holidays and are making an easy transition into 2014.

To state the obvious, I completely neglected the blog and am now over TWO months behind in posts. It also just so happens that the past two months have been the busiest and most worth-writing-about months probably of my life. But taking time to do it all justice would take the rest of the next semester, and I want to try to be more current. So I'm going to give the BRIEFEST of brief overviews of the highlights before instituting a new policy. I'm going to try to blog weekly and with briefer posts to give this blog a bit of efficiency. Wish me luck!

THE HIGHLIGHTS:

November 15-17: Took a fantastic trip to Brussels and Amsterdam with my friends Holly and Heather. Saw the Red Light District, took an evening canal tour, visited Anne Frank's House, scarfed down some Dutch pancakes, and whizzed through the Rijksmuseum (saw some stunning Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Van Gogh) in Amsterdam. Bought chocolate, ate Belgian waffles and frijtes, saw the Peeing Boy, toured the Cathedral, and struggled with French in Brussels.

Amsterdam canals

November 22-24: I turned twenty on the 22nd and was treated to a fantastic evening with my friends the night before hitting Geneva with Stephanie, Heather, Holly, Megan, Katie, and Tess. We ate chocolate, saw the great fountain, bought Swatches, shopped in Old Town, drank decadent hot cocoa, tried cheese fondue, struggled with Swiss francs, and climbed the Cathedral towers.

Geneva from the cathedral towers

November 28-December 1: After a Thanksgiving lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe, I joined my friends in Salzburg, Austria. Enjoyed the Christmas markets in the light snow, tried bosna (fantastic curry-sausage sandwiches with mustard), drank glühwein for warmth, saw Mozart's birthplace, and took a Sound of Music tour through the spectacular Austrian Alps. Took the train to Vienna and stood in line to get tickets to the famous Viennese opera for THREE EUROS apiece. (We were in the nosebleeds but it was fantastic.) Toured one of the infamous Vienna cemeteries and saw the burial places of Beethoven, Schubert, Suppé, the Strausses, and Mozart.

The view from the top of the Salzburg fortress with my friends Katie and Megan

December 6-8: I spent this weekend reconnecting with Rome. Visited the Capitoline museum and took long walks around the city to plan for my family's approaching visit.

December 13: I took a cooking class with about half the Rome program and learned to make traditional food from the Lazio region including soup, pasta, meatballs, and tiramisù. It was a delightful, fun, and delicious way to kick off exams and bid farewell to what had been an unforgettable semester.

December 19-23: My parents and brother arrived in Rome, where we spent days hitting the major sites including a few I hadn't seen before, like the stunning Galleria Borghese (with truly breathtaking Bernini sculptures). We also saw Pope Francis give a Papal Angelus in Saint Peter's.

December 23-26: We then went south to Sorrento in the Bay of Naples for a pleasant Christmas. We also climbed Mount Vesuvius, which afforded some spectacular views, and visited Pompeii (for a much more adequate amount of time than my previous visit).

From the top of Vesuvius! Notice the steam rising in the background...oooooh....

December 26-January 1: We sped north to Florence and hit the major sites there including the Accademia (where David is...sigh...), Uffizi Gallery, the Bargello, the Pitti Palace, the Medici Chapels, the Duomo, and the Church of Santa Croce (the burial place of Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli, and others). Enjoyed a lovely dinner with my friends and their parents who were in Florence as well. We also took day trips to Pisa (which was much more beautiful than I would have thought) and Siena.

January 1-3: We finished our grand tour in Venice with a gondola ride, coffee in the famous Cafe Florian in Piazza San Marco, and several trips to the Rialto Bridge. It was sad to say goodbye to my family, but it had been wonderful to reconnect with them and show them a piece of Italy.

January 3-8: I was thrilled to be reunited with my friend Marta in her home country of Spain! Flew in to Barcelona and spent three nights with her family in her hometown of Lloret de Mar (right by the sea!), where I was welcomed in like family and even got to participate in their celebration of Three Kings' Day! We finished up our time together at Marta's place in Barcelona, where I got to see Gaudi's famous, still-unfinished La Sagrada Familia church.

 

Mediterranean Sea view with Marta and her sister Anna

January 8-10: Reconnected with my friends Katie, Megan, and Shannon in Paris, where we did a quick blitz of the Louvre, Versailles, Musee d'Orsay (with a fabulous impressionist collection), the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame Cathedral, and our first Mexican restaurant in four months. 

I kept humming songs from The Hunchback of Notre Dame

January 10-15: Spent an incredible five days in London with my three Paris friends and our fellow Rome alumna Sinead. Saw too much to mention, but the highlights include Westminster Abbey, a tour of Buckingham Palace (with champagne!), Billy Elliot in the West End, Borough Market and pubs with the twins' cousin Chris, the Harry Potter set tour at Warner Bros. Studios, the Tower of London, Baker Street, and seeing some of the shooting locations of BBC's Sherlock, which in case you haven't heard is kind of my favorite show. London stole my heart and ignited my imagination, and I can't wait to return.

Westminster Abbey

Buckingham Palace

January 15-19: Wrapped up a titanic break with rest, relaxation, and family time at my cousins' house about an hour's train ride north from London. I was treated to wonderful home cooking, some delightful TLC from the family pets, and a few fun outings to the market, a pub, and some fantastic Indian food. It was great to reconnect with some relatives I hadn't seen in eight years - some I hadn't met before! - and prepare for the upcoming return to Rome.

THERE WE GO. I apologize for the neglect and the subsequent need to scramble to catch up. I will try very hard to make this a weekly instead of bimonthly project. Thanks for hanging in there, and please join me as we progress into my second semester - can't even believe I'm saying it - in La Città Eterna!

SPQR!

A Smick Adventure, Part II: November 7-9

After two days of volcanic ruins and Amalfi breeze, the Smicks struck again, this time driving away from the Bay of Naples toward the ancient city of Paestum. Once called Poseidonia (before the Romans took over), this cosmopolis began as a Greek colony on the Italic peninsula and benefitted from the business of the international trading community; it was influenced not only by the Greeks but also by native Italic peoples like the Lucanians, Oscans, and Etruscans. Still, the layout of the city and much of its architecture had a distinctly Greek flavor that provided an interesting juxtaposition to the definitively Italic cities we'd seen thus far. (Thank you to Archaeology class for giving me the ability to make these distinctions.)

The first half of our stay we spent in another museum, which wasn't high on anyone's list of priorities after a lovely day of free time in Amalfi. Looking at the tomb paintings we'd studied in class was definitely a highlight, though, and we listened to some more interesting presentations from our classmates as we wandered amid the hunks of marble pediments and fragmented temple sculpture. But everyone was relieved to be released for lunch in the largely deserted little town before hitting the actual ruins in the afternoon.

Paestum/Poseidonia is most recognizably characterized by its three massive Greek-style temples on the edges of town. They're impressive, beautiful, and very well-preserved. But Paestum is also an interesting blueprint of a Greek-turned-Roman town that is less crowded and more hands-on than some of the other cities we visited. While lacking the notoriety and completeness of Pompeii, it had its own benefits including a former ekklesiastron (a very Greek circular construct designed for discussions in early democracy) and a heroon (a definitive Greek stamp of the city's founding and identity). It was a surprisingly enjoyable afternoon, therefore, to wander around the largely empty ruins, and it was capped off by another large meal back at the hotel in Pompei.

The next day, November 8, was one everyone had been anticipating: Capri. A little island off the coast known for its thriving tourist industry and gorgeous views, Capri was in its final weeks before shutting down almost completely for the winter. We were blessed with a perfect day, however, with plenty of warm sunshine but significantly lower crowds.

We took the hydrofoil (a little ferry) from the coastal city of Sorrento to Capri (pronounced KAH-pree, not ka-PREE like the juice). Most of us opted to take a boat tour to the Blue Grotto, a famous Caprese site; some - including me - decided to go on a private ride around the island as well. As we sailed through azure seas around magnificent cliff faces, our tour guides pointed out several other grotte - the Green Grotto, the Red Grotto, the White Grotto - and looped through towering rock formations off the Caprese coast. When we got to the Blue Grotto, we had to clamber three at a time into tiny wooden boats and lie flat on our backs while our guides maneuvered the difficult entrance into the Grotto itself.

Allow me to explain the scenario. My friend Sinead, my Archaeology professor, and I squished ourselves into the tiny boat behind the standing oarsman; I'd been warned about how small the entrance to the Grotto was, and I knew I'd have to duck to get inside, but at this point I couldn't even see an entrance. I just saw a line of these little wooden boats disappearing one by one into what looked like the water itself. Then I saw a minuscule opening in the cliff face itself barely visible above the rocking sea. At this point, I realized why we were going to have to lie down; the opening couldn't have been more than a meter tall. Our driver steered us forward and grabbed onto a rope that was threaded inside the Grotto, and then flung himself backwards...on top of us. He pulled us through the opening until we were inside. The water glowed an electric azure, brilliantly illuminated by daylight streaming into the dark cave from a gap beneath the surface. We sailed around the cave, our driver singing to us in Italian, captivated by the natural jewel-like luminescence. (Exiting the cave was just as thrilling as entering.)

Getting ready to enter the Blue Grotto!

The beautiful electric blue of the water

After the Grotto, a group of us hiked across the island to the top of one of the peaks to the ruins of the villa of Tiberius, Rome's second emperor. It provided unparalleled views of the spectacular coastline and a nice opportunity to sweat in the unseasonably warm sun. As the sun began to set, we sailed back to Sorrento and drove to Pompei for our last night.

At Tiberius' villa

The next day we went to the archaeological museum at Naples and enjoyed some famous Neapolitan pizza and coffee before heading to Cuma, a final ancient site that featured heavily in Virgil's Aeneid as the place where Aeneas consults the Sibyl and descends to the Underworld. I gave my second presentation - about the Cumaean Sibyl - and enjoyed exploring the fabled "Cave of the Sibyl" (which, my professor gently explained, was actually just a water cistern).

The "Cave of the Sibyl"

Returning to Rome a more unified group, we were nonetheless exhausted and ready for relaxing rest of the weekend.