I'm
heading home to England for two weeks on Saturday for Christmas, so I'd thought
I'd give a summary of some of the highlights of my first four months in Italy.
The first one was a huge party in the streets
of Siena organized by Bruco, the winners of the Palio. The Palio is a horse
race from medieval times held twice every Summer in Siena. The town is divided
up into the districts called 'contradas,' and each contrada is represented by a
horse in the race. The jockeys ride bare-back 3 times round the piazza.
Everyone from Siena is really proud of their contrada, and if they win the
celebrations go on for months. The party was quite surreal as loads of people
were dressed up in medieval outfits. All the streets were decorated with random
scenes and there was plenty of wine and live music.
It was amazing when the new James Bond film
came out because the beginning is filmed in Siena, part of which when the Palio
is going on. Everyone in the cinema started clapping. One shot even shows the
end of the road where I live!
http://www.the007generation.de/22blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/palio.jpg
My second highlight is Wednesday nights,
because every Wednesday there are parties organized for all the international
students. There is a really cool bar called 'La Bella Vista' where all the
walls and ceilings are completely covered in old film posters and they serve
amazing mojitos and daquiris, which are ridiculously strong. A really cute jack
russell dog also lives there called 'Ultimo.'
Leading on from this theme, is when me and 5
friends dressed up as 'zucche' - pumpkins, on halloween. We bought bright
orange ponchos and stuffed them with balloons. The Italians don’t really
get the dressing up thing, so we did get some looks…
I've also been exploring some other parts of
Italy since I've been here. The first was to Assisi, where St. Francis of
Assisi is from. It was so peaceful there, and you see monks and nuns just
wandering round the streets.
The next was Rome, where the hotel we stayed
in was right near the Spanish steps. We saw a woman jump into the Trevi
Fountain and try to re-enact the scene in 'La Dolce Vita,' but got taken away
by the police straight after! I also ate the best pizza I have ever tasted in
an old church that had been converted into a restaurant, it still had frescos
painted all over the walls. My flat mate from near Naples says the further
South you go, the better the pizza. (Since being in Italy I have become
slightly obsessed with food…) However, the colloseum was probably my favourite part.
It’s massive, and it’s still so intact that you can still picture the barbarity
and bloodshed of the gladiator and wild animal fights that went on there so
long ago.
And last week I went to Florence. I saw the ponte
vecchio with all the gold jewellery shops and went in the stupidly expensive
big designer fashion shops just for fun. I saw the famous statue of
Michelangelo’s David I also went to the uffizi, where I saw really beautiful
paintings by Botticelli like 'Primavera' and 'The Birth of Venus.’
So that's about it. Next semester I want to visit Milan, Bologna and Naples, but right now I'm looking forward to Christmas and going home to see my family.
Bye for now. x