"In this big, epic movie - everyone is an extra."

Last week I went to see Michelangelo’s David. I figured that I better, considering I’ve been here since September and hadn’t seen it yet. This may be blasphemous, but I like the copy in Piazza Signoria just as much. I also went to the Mercato Centrale at San Lorenzo; it’s this gigantic indoor food market with tons of meat, cheese, dried goods, produce, and my favorite, dried fruit and nuts. There are stands with every dried fruit imaginable and the best cashews I’ve ever tasted.

Saturday I went to Lucca, which is a beautiful medieval town surrounded by it’s original city walls. To get in, you have to walk through these super-old winding tunnels.


The churches are beautiful and the shopping is excellent. I also ran across another parade with people dressed in Renaissance garb. Again, I have yet to ascertain the occasion for the parade. That’s the second seemingly unmotivated parade I’ve seen in two months.

I visited the Boboli Gardens with my comedy class. They're incredible. And I've realized that the only time I see trees in Florence is when I'm in a garden. I miss foliage.

I also went to a an artisan's workshop with my Italian class and we learned about etching. Kind of neat.

I went to Torino for the Torino Film Festival and the city is beautiful. We had clear views of the snow-capped Alps and the streets were strung with Christmas lights. We visited the National Film Museum, which is now my favorite museum of all time. It had cameras from the development of cinema, the earliest shorts, movie paraphernalia, and some really interesting exhibits on special effects. I could have spent a week in there, but unfortunately we only had a couple of hours. You can also take a glass elevator (it’s very Willy Wonka) up to the top of the tower and see a gorgeous view of Turin.

This was Marilyn Monroe's bustier.

And an original script of Citizen Kane.

Chewy!

And a gremlin from Gremlins 2.

I saw Roman Polanski this weekend. I figured it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity since he’s not allowed in the United States. He was very small and very arrogant. But the man does know how to make a darn good film.

I saw some movies from the British Renaissance (the late 70s, early 80s), some by Polanski, and some new films that were in the competition. We had passes that let us into as many movies as we wanted. It was a cinophile's wet dream. I didn’t want to leave. Also, Ferrero Rocher sponsored it we got tons of free chocolate. And apparently, they’re the company who makes Nutella, so they also gave us these great little snacks called Nutella & GO! that are basically tubs of Nutella with dipping sticks. So good.

And here are some videos from inside the awesome interactive exhibits in the film museum. On the left, I'm inside a Camera Obscura and on the right I'm Elliot from ET!

Roman Holiday

The Vatican Museums are crazy-huge. And they're crammed with the most amazing stuff from all corners of the globe. This pine cone is from ancient Rome and the lions are Egyptian. So basically, they just took things from all different cultures and religions and incorporated them into Catholicism.


This is one of the many endless hallways of miscellaneous marble sculpture in the Vatican Museums.

And this is THE LOACOAN. The most famous Hellenistic sculpture. Ever. The story of this sculpture is that Laocoan attempted to warn the people of Troy to not accept the giant wooden gift left outside their gates by the Greeks. As punishment for this effort, Athena sent snakes to strangle his sons.
Notice the slightly different color of Loacoan's right arm. It was found by an archaeologist in an antique store in Rome in the 19th century. Before it was found, they thought his arm was extended straight. The copy of this that was made in the Renaissance has the arm attached the wrong way. It's in the Uffizi.

And the Belvedere Torso that inspired Michaelangelo to change the way he sculpted and painted forever.

And this is just a giant bird bath that the Ancient Romans made for decoration.

And Raphael's School of Athens where he sneakily painted portraits of his friends.

And the inside of St. Peter's Basilica, which is basically big enough to fit all other churches in.

And the outside.

We went to a delicious restaurant and Piazza Navona to see the fountain of the four rivers.

And the Coliseum, which is incredible every time you see it.

In the Arch of Titus you can see his soul being carried to the heavens by an eagle.

Mussolini's window:

Victor Emmanuel's building with the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

The metro in Rome is only 1 euro, which is great, but it also doesn't run very many places. Probably because it's crazy difficult to dig underground in Rome without discovering something and then having to turn it into an archaeological site. So a lot of the metro trains just outside the city are aboveground, including this rather creatively graffiti-ed one.

Saturday night Ashley and I stayed in Ostia, which is a seaside town outside of Rome and we ate delicious sushi and watched Gladiator in our hostel in honor of our day in Ancient Rome.

Sunday we went to the National Gallery of Modern Art, which is right near the Borghese gardens, They are so pretty. And the weather was incredible; we were so overdressed.

It was pouring rain when we went into the Pantheon. It is seriously mind-blowing to see the rain fall through the Oculus. You can stand right underneath it and not get wet. I attempted to capture it with a video:

C'est si bon

For the record, an actual overnight train was nothing like in Some Like It Hot. It was cramped and smelly and arrived in Paris three hours late. But it got us to Paris. We made dinner in the apartment we rented (and I use the term "we" loosely as the only thing I did was chop up veggies) and accidentally made an obscene amount of rice, but it was delicious. We went to the Louvre Friday night:

We saw the Mona Lisa; it looked exactly how I wanted it to.

Here she is:

And here is the mob of people swarming her:

Saturday morning we went to the Catacombs. When all of the cemeteries in Paris were condemned, the bones from the Cemetery of the Innocents were moved into Paris's quarries. It's a little morbid, but also unspeakably cool. The entrance says "Stop. Here is the kingdom of the dead."

You walk 1.6 km underground. Surrounded by bones.

And we saw Notre Dame

Here it is from the back:

There is a park right outside of the Cathedral where Ashley and I tried out a see-saw.

Sainte Chappelle is this beautiful two story chapel. The stained glass sparkles when the sun shines through it.

And it has gargoyles on the Baptistery. Very menacing.

The Centre Georges Pompidou has a huge collection of contemporary art. And the building is really cool.

The external escalator of the museum also has these incredible views of Paris.

We went to Versailles last Sunday and we missed the whole "fall back an hour" thing. We woke up an hour earlier than we intended, but it worked out because the lines to buy tickets were excessive; but it was worth it.

And it was fall! I didn't realize how much I missed trees and grass in Florence.

A lot. I missed them a lot.

This is Ashley, Jennifer, and I in front a fountain in the gardens at Versailles. They only turn on the fountains twice a day for an hour each time and pipe in obscenely loud classical music.

The Palace is overwhelmingly huge. And decadent. And lavish.

Marie Antionette's hamlet was adorable.

Unfortunately, there was a exhibition of Jeff Koons's work at the Royal Palace. It was a little tacky. Not like Versailles is the model of restraint, but the inflatable lobster hanging from the ceiling might just be a little too much.

The Hall of Mirrors was glittery, and very reflective.

When we got back from Versailles, we went to see the Eiffel Tower at night. In the rain. At first, when we came out of the Metro, we didn't see it, but as soon as we turned the corner it was embarrassingly apparent. It was lit up blue!

The next day we explored Montmartre. This is Sacre Couer, or church of the Sacred Heart.

And the Moulin le Gallette. I'm still a little fuzzy on why it's famous, but I think the jist of it is that it's really old and a bunch of artists have painted it.

The Le mur des j' taime has "I love you" written on it 311 times in different languages.

The Moulin Rouge is on a street that is completely lined with stores and theaters peddling all manner of unsavory items for any type of sexual deviance. I'm glad we went during the day.

We went to Espace Dali which has some of his sketches and sculptures, which was kind of neat, but ultimately disappointing. It's over-hyped.

French pastries for breakfast!
I might be in desperate need of a haircut.

Ashley, Jennifer, and I decided to try CouchSurfing. It's this global project that's designed to inspire community and interaction. Also, it provides a great excuse for broke college kids to crash in someone else's house. We had an amazing experience. We stayed with the most adorable couple in this super-tiny town called Arville outside of Paris. They live in the country in a restored 16th century farmhouse. They were maybe the nicest people ever and totally broke the whole "French people are mean" stereotype. When we got there, they made us dinner (quiche) and invited their friends over for a dance party where I taught Matheiu the Cotton-Eyed Joe (which I couldn't remember, so I just made something up. Hope he never actually has to perform that dance in public.)

The next day, they took us to Chataudun where we visited their friends and a castle.
This is Matheiu and Samuel, our hosts, outside of the castle which was actually completed half in the medieval style and half in the Renaissance.

Inside:

They had these neat little cups that, when you press a button, release the scent of an herb that they grow in the castle's garden.

A view of the town of Chataudun:

This is all of us in Marie and Pierre's apartment. They're friends of Matheiu and Samuel who want to host CouchSurfers now, because we were so cool.

This is me with Capucine, Matheiu and Samuel's donkey. They treat her just as any other pet, and she kind of acts like a dog. With hooves.

It snowed at their house. In October. It was sooooo cold. And I did not have the proper footwear.

We also visited Chambord, which was ridiculous, but hard to enjoy as castles don't have central heating systems. Not wonder people used to wear so many layers.

We spent the last two days of our vacation in Paris. Of course when we went to see the Eiffel Tower during the day it was incredibly foggy.

And the Arc de Triumph:

We ate lunch at this restaurant that serves very traditional French food. Workers from neighboring factories used to eat here and the walls are covered in numbered cubbies where regular customers stowed their napkins.

Since it was Halloween, we decided we needed to commemorate the day with something unique, since they don't really celebrate it. So we decided to try absinthe. We went to a bar called The Green Fairy (in French, obviously) and the bartender used an absinthe spoon and lit our sugar on fire and everything. We didn't hallucinate though. Apparently the hallucinations were caused by some chemical that was leaked into it during faulty distillation back in the day. Now it just tastes like really strong, expensive liquorice.

The next day, we went to the Cemetery at Pere-Lachaise to see the final resting places of Jim Morrison, Proust, Edith Piaf, Chopin, Oscar Wilde, and a bunch of French people.

(aren't these tombs cool?!)

Oscar Wilde's tombstone (I don't know if it classifies as a tombstone, since it's ginormous) is covered in kisses, so we followed suit.

The weather cleared up a little as we walked along the Seine and realized how lucky we were to be there.

It was an amazing trip and Paris was magical, even in the rain. I would go back in a heartbeat.

Of course, it couldn't all have gone smoothly. After we finally reached the airport (which was 1 hour and a half outside of Paris) and boarded our flight that was plagued by almost constant turbulence, we missed the first bus back to Florence (our flight landed in Pisa). Unfortunately, by this time it was midnight. They said that they would send another bus right away, but as time dragged on, our hope waned. A bus finally showed up at 2:30 am. But everything in Italy is waiting, so the tardiness was not completely unexpected. As soon as we boarded the bus and heard chatter in a language that I can stumble through respectably, I felt a little bit at home. Now that more than half of my time here is over, the imminence of my eventual departure is beginning to loom. I still have so much more I want to do and see!