Milan! Thankgiving! Paris! Brussels! Paris!

My week began by a quick trip on Sunday to Milan for shopping and church visiting. Everywhere we go throughout Europe, we always end up looking at churches and Milan was no different. The Duomo is a giant church that is a work of art in its own right. It’s grand and beautiful and insane. I’ve never seen such an intricate building before in my life. We spent our five hours in Milan looking at the sights and stopping in more than a few stores before heading back to Rome for Mass, homework and Skype dates with families.

The second major event of my week was the Thanksgiving banquet the Hotel Tiziano puts on for us. All of us girls were a little homesick at that thought of missing thanksgiving with our families back in the states. Thankfully we had a banquet (which is not an over exaggeration) on Wednesday for lunch to help bring us together.

We walked into the dinning room we use to find banquet tables lined up for all of us, with candles and orange centerpieces all around. There was rolls and butter on the table (which is a rare calamity here in Rome) and everyone sat with their group of friends while our professors and other staff members of the Saint Mary’s College Rome Program all sat on one long table at the back of the room, it felt a little like Hogwarts, maybe more so if the students tables had been straight and not diagonal.

Before dinner started we were lead in song by one of the deacons who helps in our church and together we sang God Bless America, (which Dr. Prebys said was our national anthem, since she’s lived outside of the U.S. for the past 30 years, we’ll let it slide) and the Italian national anthem that no one knew the words to. We ate a fabulous dinner of turkey, butternut squash ravioli, baked potatoes, pees, chestnut stuffing, a saffron rice and mushroom dish along with a lemon tart for dessert. To drink we had white, red and sparking wine, the latter of which was used for a toast to the pilgrims, the Italians and everyone back home. Like in the states we were stuffed to the brim and my friends and I had fun taking pictures with our professors who were in the spirit. It was a fun dinner that made everyone less homesick and thankful to be in Italy. Since I had recently finished my novel for National Write A Novel Month, which is when you write a 50,000-word novel in one month, my friends and I toasted to that as well, since I was ecstatic to be done.

After my last class on Wednesday, my roommate and I boarded a sleeping train to Paris where we were spending thanksgiving break one of our friends from Saint Mary’s College, who is studying in Dijon, France. On the train we met a man who was from France but was working in Africa, he decided to be my French professor since after not studying French in 4 years, I was having trouble remembering most of the words. This wasn’t helped by the fact that Italian and French are so similar and I often get them mixed up. He told us for this train ride, we would be his daughters and he would protect us. It was nice to hear because my roommate was especially nervous about who we would be staying with overnight.

Little did we know that he was in the wrong carriage and was an hour later moved to his right one. To celebrate our empty sleeping room, we watched Miracle on 34th Street. Right after the movie ended we stopped in Florence where we had 4 more people join our little room and we all settled in for a good night’s rest.

Our train arrived an hour and a half late and we jumped off and walked immediately to the Jardin des Plants where we had a yummy picnic lunch before walking around a little bit. We got to explore another side of Paris, the less touristy side on our way to the Luxemburg Gardens. The residential area was quiet and beautiful, not at all like the bustling areas around the Eiffel Tower or Notre Dame Cathedral. The Luxemburg Gardens are the place to play for Parisians in the spring and summer but in the late fall, it was mostly bare with the exception of people on walks and birds everywhere. The area was still gorgeous and you could see why people loved coming to it.

Afterwards we checked into our hotel before heading back out to sight see. Since we only had two days in Paris really, we had to make the most of our trip. First we stopped at Notre-Dame Cathedral where we walked inside, saw the nativity scene and took too many pictures of people putting up the large Christmas tree outside of the church. Next we went to my favorite stop, the Shakespeare and Co bookstore. This is the place that Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway and the rest of the lost generation wrote their novels as ex-pats in Paris. Then we walked around the Latin Quarter and then to the Ile-de-Louis, which the much quieter island next to the one Notre Dame is on. We had dinner at a fabulous little creperie before walking past the bastile on our way home. Instead of going out like many young students in Paris, we snuggled up in bed and watched Christmas movies, excited to have the season begin.

Our next morning we woke up and headed to the Galleries Lafayette to do a little shopping, both Christmas and personal before we caught our train to Brussels. The mall was all decorated for the holidays, which cheered us up since Italy hasn’t begun the season yet. When we arrived in Brussels after a short train ride, we were surprised to see that everything was decorated for the holidays.

In Brussels the air actually smells like powedered sugar and sweetness. Compared to Rome, which doesn’t smell very good, Paris and Brussels, both smell like baked goods and sugar, something we much prefer. We headed first to the Comic Strip Museum which should have been renamed the Tintin Museum. Apparently Belgium has quite a few famous comic strip artists, including the man who created Tintin and The Smurfs, which both had movies in theaters this year. The museum was fun and different after all the art museum and churches we had spent time in the last two months.

After the museum we went and saw the Manikin Pls, which is a fountain of a young boy peeing. I wish I was joking but people there are obsessed with it. We even saw sculptures of him in chocolate as we walked around. We had dinner at a waffle place where I perhaps had the most delicious and expensive waffle of my life. It was worth it because there isn’t really breakfast in Italy. My new favorite type of Belgian waffles are with maple syrup and whipped cream, it’s absolutely amazing.

After dinner we started walking around when we stumbled upon a Christmas festival right next to the Church of Saint Nicolas. We saw a light show at the town center that included lights on the town hall, a giant Christmas tree and a nativity scene with very lifelike wax figures. Then we walked along the booths which included Christmas ornament shops, many bars and a few clothing boutiques. There was a Ferris wheel, other carnival games and an outdoor ice skating rink. It was magical to walk through and made me so excited to go home for the holidays. Before we caught our train back to Paris, we grabbed some hot French fries, which were invented in Belgium.

Saturday morning began with us waking up, eating two croissants quickly and heading to the Louvre to meet up with my best friend Cathy who is studying in Dijon. After a giant scene in front of the pyramids greeting one another, we went inside the museum. We spent three hours in the museum looking at all the French, Italian and other European paintings since we were a little strung out on Greek, roman and Etruscan vases from our last two months studying them every day. We saw the famous Mona Lisa and some other famous works but they were not our main attraction. I had never been so happy to see paintings by Pissarro, Monet, Manet, Picasso, Renoir and Sibley, since impressionists are quite the opposite of ancient art.

Next we went to the famous Tulleries Gardens and spent a little time around there before having the most amazing lunch at a little café on our way to the Eiffel tower. I’ve never had a better Croque Madame in my life (a Croque Madame is French bread with ham, an egg and melted cheese on top).

We had bought our tickets in advance for the Eiffel Tower since we didn’t want to wait in the long line and because we were going to the very top. I hadn’t gone up last time at all when I was in Paris so this was going to be something new for me. It was an amazing experience just for the view alone. It was so beautiful and not at all frightening. I have some amazing pictures from the top that I’ll always keep.

Next we went to the Petit Palace, which is one of the buildings constructed for the world fair. It’s an art museum now and we saw a wide selection of art, including pictures of Paris from the 1860s to present. We walked along the seine river to see the different Bridges including Pont Neuf, the oldest bridge in the city. As we walked Cathy back to the train station, we grabbed crepes from the cute little restaurant we had dinner at on the Il-de-Louis on Thursday night. Before we went to bed, we packed our bags up to leave Paris to head back to Rome.

Over the past two months, Rome has somehow become a type of Home to me. While everyone else has felt homesick I haven’t at all. I guess that may come from growing up all over the United States and having family in so many different parts of the country. For me, home is in many places because I can saw London felt like home because of all the memories when I visited there as a little girl with my parents. I can say Washington D.C. where I lived when I was younger is my home too because I have friends and memories there as well. Chagrin, where I’ve lived for 14 years minus the time spent at Saint Mary’s, is my hometown and while I miss all the people and holidays there, I can’t say I’m actually homesick. Saint Mary’s College is just as much my home because its where my life has been the last year and where I have countless friends.

While I can’t wait to go home for the holidays, I’ll be sad to leave the place I’ve lived for three months. I’ll always have these memories to cherish because I’ve had an amazing time here. Studying abroad is an experience I’ll never forget and I never want to. So much happens when you live in a foreign country. You grow in ways you never thought possible, you make new friends and you also learn what little random things are important to you back home. I have exactly 19 days left in Italy and I’m going to make the most of them.

Southern Italy Fall Break Trip

On Tuesday morning we set out for the Southern Italy tour. Waking up at 6 am after a week of midterms was not exactly what we all had in mind for our fall break. Neither was going on tours of ancient sites, museums and being in Naples, a city full of garbage. Turns out while most of us were dreading going, it ended up a lot better than we thought it would.

Tuesday began with out 3-hour drive to Pompeii, where we visited all the ruins of the city that had been uncovered under almost 2000 years of volcanic ash, dirt and everything else under the sun. As we walked along the ancient city, we saw bars, houses, roman baths, theaters and shops. The city was a perfect construction of a roman town and as we walked along the city, we didn’t just see how life was like 2000 years ago but we saw how a city stopped dead in it’s tracks. There was graffiti on the walls for upcoming political elections and bodies of victims frozen in their last positions, some knocked over from the ash after suffocating, others crouched covering their mouths. As we left Pompeii we saw how the people lived and how similar they were to us.

After Pompeii we settled into our hotel in Naples, found yummy pizza and went grocery shopping. Everyone went to bed far earlier than they had probably in years, since most students were asleep at 10 pm.

Waking up at 7 again to head to the archeological museum was much better after a nice breakfast of fresh pastries on the terrace at the hotel. The museum ended up being closed for All Saint’s Day (a legal holiday in Italy) so we headed to Cumae, which is the location of the acropolis of Cumae and of Sybil’s Cave. For students not in the mythology course, the cave was well a cave, but if you’ve read the Aeneid (or listened to the student presentations on it), it’s the spot of a fortune telling Sybil who helps Aeneas on his journey.

After our morning tours we were let free to wander around Naples. My group chose to visit the Castle of the Egg on the bay of Naples, which led to breath taking views of the city and the sea. We then wandered through the main street, soaking up the activity of Naples. This city was so unlike Rome but I can’t exactly say how, it’s just one of those things you have to experience on your own.

For dinner that night we wandered around looking for a pizza place. Naples is known to be the best city in the entire world for pizza, and they weren’t lying. I’ve never had better pizza in my entire life, including the 6 weeks I’ve been living in Rome. We happened to stumble upon the pizzeria in Eat Pray Love where we each ate too much pizza, took a few too many photos trying to be Julia Roberts and made great friends with the staff.

Thursday was the day of the Almafi drive. If you’ve never heard of the Almafi coast, look it up, because it’s absolutely gorgeous. We packed ourselves into two smaller buses and drove for 4 hours down roads that resembled ribbon candy on cliffs compared to actual roads with a driver who drove a tad too fast. Tad may be an understatement since most of the girls were a little carsick by the time we stopped in Almafi, but it was worth it. The sites were beautiful and once we arrived in the city for our hour break, we didn’t want to leave. The city is known for it’s limoncello and you find it every in crazy looking bottles but the city also has very friendly people and some even better olive oil.

After transferring to the bigger bus with our much better driver (much to everyone’s happiness), we headed to Paestum, which is the site of some of the best-preserved Greek temples in the entire world. Dr. Prebys (the program director) wasn’t joking when she said they were better preserved than in Greece. I took so many pictures because I was so astounded by them and the archeological professor I was with on the tour made everything come alive.

On Friday, our last day in Naples, we were ushered to two museums. The first was the archeological museum, which held artifacts from Pompeii and a large collection of Greek statues. We browsed the collection of warriors and Gods and had a little too much fun trying to decide if Apollo’s head was really on Aphrodite’s body. The professors in this program make all of the visits fun and you learn without even realizing.

The Capodimonte museum afterwards though was one where all of the students could agree they didn’t want to leave. We got a break from the ancient world and looked at Italian renaissance art in a beautiful palace.

For our last night, a few of us went back to the pizza place we’d discovered earlier. They workers remembered us and were so nice. They wanted to take more photos with us, had pizzas in front of us in less than 3 minutes and dealt with all of our excitement. After dinner we were sad to leave because not only had we grown to like Naples, but we were sad to leave the pizza place. We decided if it had been in Rome, it would have been our place to go; sort of how in Friends, they had Central Perk.

As we left Naples early Saturday morning we all looked back on the trip we’d once been dreading. Everyone had a better perspective on the last six weeks and was excited to get back to Rome. It was funny how the minute we got back to the city limits, everyone was excited; Rome has really become our home the last few weeks. Halfway through I can say I learned so much already, everything from knowing if you want the most of the experience, to take archeology, art history or archeology to finding the best gelato places all over Italy. This trip was so much better than I thought it would be, but I was so happy to return to Rome. This week just solidified how happy I am that I studied abroad and I’m looking forward to the rest of my semester here.