This weekend we went to Bologna, which is a smaller city about 2 hours from Venice. We left on Thursday evening and got there at around 9. We stayed at a Best Western that had one of the best bath tubs ever!!! It was WONDERFUL! We also had king size beds, which three people were sharing in each room and they were WONDERFUL! You couldn't even tell you were in a bed with anyone else because they were so big. It was a wonderful hotel, with free breakfast, but was not included in Frommer's guide. As a result of our trip, we have decided to start a "Dear Frommers" compilation to write about our trip and offer suggestions of things he left out. Whether or not this will actually come to fruition is undetermined at this time.
There was a really nice and inexpensive restaurant right down the street from the hotel, so we ate there twice. They had such good caprese! It was quite yummy!
On Friday Ashley, Sarah, and I went to the ArteFiere 2006, which is a contemporary art festival that happens once a year in Bologna. It's a pretty big deal in contemporary art. They just had these huge galleries and I could have walked around it all day. Really, I could have just sat there and people watched all day and been completely amused. My two favorites were Horn and someone else who's first name is Manfreddi Ben... something. We spent about the whole day there, while the rest of our group tried to go to the archeology museum, which is the most extensive archeology museum in Italy or something like that. But by the time they found it, it was closed but they did get to go into the old University, which is the oldest University I think, and they had a snowball fight in the piazza of it, without knowing they were at the University. On Saturday I went to the archeology museum with Dan and Kati. It was kind of small but it was interesting. Dan had a sketchy experience that morning before we met him at the museum, due to a logistical misunderstanding, but unfortunately I cannot repeat it to my elders because that would lead to an awkward situation. Suffice it to say, we laughed for a good half-hour straight and he definitely gets the button for the semester. Dan will never go back to Bologna again because he really had a bad day, but at least he could have a sense of humor about it.
We had some time to kill before the siesta was over after we left the museum, so we stopped into a random "living art museum." The house it was in was really cool. It had awesome ceilings. They also had these really cool, big, leather bound books, with really ornate covers. They were classics like the Gospels, Dante, and the Odyssey. They cost about 1,000 euro a piece. Then we walked down a kind of scary hallway in the house and a horror movie was playing in another room, which just added to the sketchiness of the hallway. It was a funny and interesting experience.
After we went to the live art museum, we went to the Basilica di San Stefano. There were four churches connected together and Charlamagne stopped there to worship. It was by far the most beautiful church I have ever been in. It was built in a very midieval style and it was very cold inside. We saw some of it before they turned the lights on and perhaps that made it kind of more moving. But it was just very quiet and very holy and just really cool. I really liked it.
Then we met up with Robyn, who had gone to see the archeology museum after us, and ate dinner at Cafe Zamboni, as in the giant machine that cleans the ice at ice skating rinks. I got a hot chocolate and it was like drinking chocolate fondu. It was so thick! We ended up going there the next day too. They had cool cups and it seemed like the place where a lot of students liked hanging out. We stayed there for about 2 1/2 hours that night. Then we went back to the room and watched MTV. However, over the weekend we also watched CNN so we found about all the stuff going on in Palestine. Also on the way back, we passed through the Piazza di San Piedro, which is where we had met Dan that morning, but it looked so amazing at night! America really just can't compare with the beauty of Italian cities. It's not fair.
Oh yeah. On Friday, I spent an hour and 15 minutes in the bathroom, thoroughly enjoying our giant bathtub. :o)
On Sunday, Kati and I got up early with the intention of going to church. However, no one else was up and then we found out we had to check out earlier than we thought so instead we spent the morning waking people up and checking out. We were going to try to see San Domenico, which looked quite amazing on the outside at night, but it was closed again. This was the second time we had tried to see it. Frommers lied about the times. It holds Michaelangelo's first paintings, so it would have been really cool to be able to see. Instead we climbed one of the towers of San Stefano. There were 500 steps and they were steep and made out of wood and scary. When we came back down I counted them and the rest of the group sang such classics as "My Favorite Things," "Do a Deer Song" from the Sound of Music, and "Build Me Up Buttercup." This greatly helped to relieve people's nerves. The view from the top was awesome and it was quite windy. We had a fun time taking pictures.
After that we had to run back to the hotel and catch our train.
Monday and Tuesday were pretty busy because we had a lot of schoolwork to get done, but we did it.
Yesterday afternoon we went to a Venetian high school. It's 500 years old and was founded by Napoleon. It was really cool! I wish I had brought a camera, but I didn't. They had a really nice view of the lagoon and the cemetary, which is it's own island. The builing looked really small but it just kept going. However, when we had to talk to the other Italian students it was by far the most awkward situation of my life. As one person said, "It was more awkward than middle school." You really had to be there to grasp how awkward it was. We were talking to two guys. One was just socially awkward and the other was really stoned. His eyes were glazed over like glazed dougnuts. So, obviously the conversation was not the best.
and those are my stories for now.