Florence and Siena

This past weekend, I took a trip with my friend Jill, my roommate Molly, and the rest of my art history class to Siena and Florence. We took a private bus on friday to Siena, which was much colder than I had expected. For lunch that day, I got the most delicious meal that I have had in, at the very least, a month. I had homemade pasta with a mushroom sauce. Mmmm. Oh, the luxury of eating out for every meal during the weekend...I think that I have only eaten out once in Rome, the day that we went ice skating. Anyway, after Siena, we took our bus to Florence, got situated in the hotel, and found a restauraunt for dinner. Over the course of the weekend, we made our way to 13 different churches and museums, including the Ufitzi gallery. Saturday night, we went out to dinner with our professor which was cool, because he is incredibly knowledgable about his subject matter, and interesting to talk to. The trip was really awesome, because we saw al of these famous and beautiful pieces of art from the early rennaissance period that I had heard about and read about for such a long time (Cimabue, Giotto, Duccio, Donatello, Mosaccio, Botticelli, Leonardo, Michelangelo, etc etc etc). Also, the timing of it all was great. We saw Donatello's David in the same day that we saw Michelangelo's David. I especially enjoyed that.

My photos from Florence and Siena:






http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2024881&id=1340490149&l=ea7f451c57

Spring Break 2010

So, after a grueling week of midterms, my reward was six days in the warm, beautiful country of Tunisia. I was warned dozens of times about how dangerous it was going to be, but I felt incredibly safe, the whole time that I was there. I was with a group of around 40 other students from my study abroad program, plus one of the Italian professors, and her friend who was our tour guide. We spent a lot of time on a bus throughout the week, but it meant that we were able to see most of the country. We started out in Tunis, spent a night in Sousse, saw El Djem, took a ferry to the island of djerba, saw the outside of the synagogue where the oldest Torah in the world is kept (but we weren't allowed to go in, because it was Purim), spent a couple of nights in Douz, one of which was spent in the middle of the Sahara desert in a tent, rode camels, went to several souks (markets of sorts), among many many other things. I really like the traditional Tunisian style of clothing, so I bought myself a dress, a shirt, and a sweatshirt. I also had an opportunity to read Angels and Demons, (thanks, Laura for letting me borrow it!), and for the first time in years, I had a "can't put the book down until I finish it" experience, which was awesome. Every night (besides the night in the desert), we had beautiful rooms in some of the fanciest hotels I've ever been to, and there was a buffet dinner and a buffet breakfast every day of the trip. My favorite night, though, had to be the night in the desert. Last year, I had a similar experience when I went to Israel, but there were less people around this time, and the night was less structured. It just felt so much more peaceful. There were moments where I could lie in the sand and not hear anything besides the wind, my thoughts, and my breathing. I could not have asked for a better spring break.




These are the links to my pictures from Tunisia:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2024742&id=1340490149&l=2ffb720530
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2024783&id=1340490149&l=b9d4b20aa7
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2024781&id=1340490149&l=5c340a1309

Holland

So, we decided to take a weekend trip to Amsterdam. The problem with traveling to a city for only a weekend is that you either don't have time to do everything that you want to do, or you're rushing to cram everything in. We weren't exactly rushing, but I'm so exhausted because of how much we managed to do this weekend. Friday, we left our residence around 4AM, to catch a 6:30 flight. The weather in Holland was pretty much gloomy and cold all around. Over the course of the weekend, I went to six museums, went on a boat tour of the canals, rode bikes in the rain, among other things that I'm probably forgetting. Our first museum stop was the Anne Frank house, which is somewhere that I've wanted to visit since I was 12 years old, and reading books like Number the Stars and Anne Frank's diary. I'm really glad that we went. The museum was just set up so well, between the quotes from her diary, the pictures, and the videos of people who were close to her. To lighten the mood, we got bagels after the museum, and then we went to the Van Gogh museum, which I enjoyed a lot more than I was expecting to, even though we were all sleep deprived. On saturday, I saw the Jewish museum which had this really cool exhibit (I took some pictures of it, ill up them later) on this one artist whose name I don't remember. Then we putzed around a flea market and went to the Rembrant house, and then to a photography museum. Yesterday, I went on boat tour of the canals, and even though it was rainy and foggy, it was really pretty. Then, the rijtmuseum, which is hyped up a lot, but I didn't find it to be that exciting, and then we all went for a bike ride. Amsterdam is such an amazing bike city. It was nice to hear people speaking english again. I was also really excited that there was a grocery store right across the street from our hostel. Even more exciting, it was a grocery store that we have in Philly, but literally everything in this store was different. [I really like going to different grocery stores and seeing what products they sell/who they cater to/how their prices are.] Almost everything cost approximately one euro. They sold giant jars of peanut butter for one euro, which wouldn't be exciting, but in Italy they don't really have peanut butter, and in my local grocery store in Rome, a smallish jar of peanut butter costs over 5 euro (which is approx $7). And, I've been eating a lot of peaunit butter here, to get in my proteins...so one euro peanut butter was exciting to me.