GOOSE

mon. march 13

we arrived at arround 10:30, the sun was out and i couldn't believe my eyes. venice was beautiful. i took my first boat ride ever in venice. it was a taxi boat that picked us up at the train station and took us to the island where our hotel was located, Lido. you see, the area of venice could be divided into three parts: main land, the old city of Venice (all located on the main island), and the many islands surrounding venice proper. we stayed in one of the surrounding islands. Once we were all checked in, we took a boat to venice proper. there, all we did was explore. the island is relatively small so one can just start walking and if you happen to get lost, its really easy to find where you are. that's exactly what charlie, collin and i did. during our exploration we stumbled upon several cool things - the church of the miracle, scarpa's entry to the architecture school, and scarpa's bridge to the querini stampali foundation. finally at around the time for sunset we made our way to see St Mark's Cathedral. what a beautiful space... we were there for a while, and of course we played with the pigeons, there is so many of them! they'll just follow you for no reason. instead of them being afraid of you, you are afraid of them... haha! maybe not so much, but it is intimidating when you see hundreds of pigeons flying towards you. anyways, at the end of the night we just headed back to our hotel and took some night shots on the way. another great day...

*robot collin fighting the pigeons

how does one begin to descrive venice?

*venice is magic.

1,000 years ago the locals in this part of italy were threatened to be taken over the babarians from the north. their solution was simple: flee to the marshy areas in the ocean. this solution gave birth to what we now know as Venice, city of canals. so somehow the peoples managed to create a city in the most horrible terrain ever. it really is like magic. Magic always has an audience, unfortunetly these days that is all there is - an audience. the current conditions have forced the locals out of the islands and into main land. all that remains is a disneyland, a place for the tourist. nevertheless, venice remains beautiful; so just like disneyland, you've got to go at least once!

*i apologize

i bet you have noticed that i've not posted anything for long time now.... lately i've been extremly busy finishing up a few projects for school and getting ready for my next adventure. this explains why today i posted what i should have been posting for the past three weeks. sorry about that.

*it will happen again.

here in about two hours i will be taking the train to venice. yay for that. after five days there, i will be in greece for another ten aditional days. yay for that too. i'm just apologysing to you guys in advance for not posting anything until about the end of march. thats when i'll be back. i'm positive that this will be the best trip yet and i'll be dying to tell you all about it, so stay tuned. Ciao!

*a look at montecchio having walked half-ways

sat. march 11

today colleen and i took a walk from the study center to the near-by castle of Montecchio. it was fun. look at the pics! ciao!


*yay! we're here!



*look back at Castiglion Fiorentino from near castle

*basilica of st francis

wed. march 8th

today we visited Assisi, birth and resting place of St Francis. this city nothing less than beautiful. as our beloved marco showed us around his home town, i could not help it but notice that there was magic there. i must say that this is by far my favorite hill town that i've seen. there is just something about it -- the peace, the colors, the location.... its all great. the first thing we visited was the basilica of st francis. this church is pretty damn cool. there is actually, in fact, two main churches built at separate times on top of each other. there is also a crypt under all of it housing the remains of st francis himself. we also had a splendid lunch there -- it was so f!$&* good! such a shame that we left kind of early because the city is pretty far from castiglion. oh well, i enjoyed every single second there, i'll probably go back. Ciao!


*view from the rocca maggiore, a fortress high above the city



*campanile in the main town square

fri. march 3rd, sat. march 4th

so this was a pretty good weekend. colleen and i departed friday morning to florence with the only goal to eat lunch at this place called eby's. yes. the goal was met and it was happiness. you see, this particular restaurant sells... burritos! yes! score! thank god i got to taste some beans and tortillas, i thought i was going insane without it. florence was fun, we walked around for hours and when it was eventually time to eat din din, we decided to call it a non-italian food day and eat chinese. i thought the chinese place we went to was ok, but it could have been lots better. its ok though, it was very cheap. we stayed at this hostel right by arno river... very cool. saturday we woke and headed to pisa. i must say it was pretty cool seeing the leaning tower in person. we didn't stick around pisa for too long, after all, there is only a couple things to see. whatev', it was good while it lasted. Ciao!

*view of the arno at night




*oops!

*etruscan well -- (il pozzo)

*a lantern used in the underground streets of perugia

Saturday morning charlie, colleen and i left rome and headed south to Napoli, the third largest city in italia. we were only in napoli breifly, just in the trainstation. from there we took a train to the small coast town of sorrento. it was a pretty cool little town but its a shame it has become overly touristy. the rain did not help either. oh well. we stayed the night there and the following day we went to pompei.

Pompei is good.


its amazing that the whole town has been preserved this well! another thing that surprised me is that the town is as big as it is. the town is huge. i guess the population was like 50,000 when mnt. vesuvius blew up. i think my pictures do it more justice than my words. anyways, we were there for a while, then we left to napoli again so that we could take the train back to rome and then so that we could take the train back to castiglion. yay. talk to you soon!

today was pretty sweet. charlie and i decided to tackle the day together and we definetly did. after walking for a long while, we ended up at the coloseum again. it remained beautiful, the only exception was that we actually sat down this time and documented the moment in our sketchbooks. after sometime of bathing the paper in ink, we decided head to the church of San Clemente. This is one of my favorite spots in the whole city of rome. The church is amazing. as it turns out, there are three structures on top of each other. the top-most structure is a 12th century church complete with a courtyard and everthing (floor level is about 6 ft below the street level). go down one more level (20 ft), and you'll find a 4th century church that almost completly excavated. then, if you down another 20 ft down you'll will find yourself walking through the streets and structures that surround an old mithraic temple that date back to the year 64 AD. its truly amazing how in rome you can letarally go back in time as you dig deeper and deeper in the ground.

after this was the Santa Scala. these are the steps that jesus christ himself walked up and down at the moment of his trial. apparently they were brought to rome from jerusalem by helena constantines mother. it is said that traces of his blood can be found on the steps and this spot is considered by many christians the holiest of places.


it was already night when we left the scala santa, so we then just got back together with some other friends for dinner and gelato. excellent day again. Ciao!

Today we took a brief break from the old rome and say the new rome. the name is Renzo Piano, and the project is Cita Della Musica. it was pretty cool, i'm not going to lie. Renzo is one of the most famous italian architects of our times, one can say that i'm a fan. The project is a center for music which holds three auditoriums and one outdoor performance space. the overall feeling for this particular project is positive although there are a few things that bothered me, but thats another discussion.

right after lunch a group of us dicided to take a trip to the Galleria Nazionale D'arte Morderna, a contemporary art museum located deep within the main park in rome (parque burghesse, i think). it was somewhat small, so it was short and sweet. afterwards we headed to the famous chiesa della imaccolata consezione (bone crypt of the cappucin monks). man, that was creepy. it turns out that back about 300 years ago these dudes decided to oarnament the crypt of this church only using human bones! got to see it to believe it. they didn't let us take pics of the place but above is a one that i managed to take when nobody was looking. we then headed to the church located the corner of the four fountains (quattro fontane) by Boromini. pretty damn good let me say. i think i liked the basement of the thing more than the actual church. towards the end of the night we visited the spanish steps and the Trevi fountain. the were both amazing. at night we went to a Hooka Bar, great place to end the night. amazing day again. Ciao!

today i explored the Vatican City. the day started very early in morning as we made the walk from our hotel to the vatican city. the first thing on the list was the vatican museum. this place is very extensive in its collection, and its collection is extensive in beauty. i got to see some of the most famous works of art in the world. my encounters included "the school of athens" by rafael, the famous Laocoon, and most important - The Sistine Chapel by the man himself, Michelangelo.
it was a magnificent place to be in, althogh the crowds did not help.

later after having a delicious lunch for only 5 euros (amazing!) i headed for St Peters. WOW. i will not attempt to describe the emotions that one experiences in this place. i can't. after spending much time outside in the piazza sketching, i decided to take the exhausting walk up to the top of the dome. the view was great. i spent almost an hour on the top, it was so beautiful...

the highlight of the day was when i finally came down from the dome and went inside St Peters. this church was unbelievable. the timing was great, they had just started mass as i entered the basilica. so i stayed for mass, which by the way, was one of the most beautiful events i've been to in my life. after mass i only stayed after to take a few photos and then left as they were closing the church for the night. Today was a great day. i'll never forget it.

roma is beauty. today i touched rome for the first time in my life. we arrived at the train station at about 10 in the morning. and yes - the rumors were very true - it was raining. a bus took the group on a brief ride through the city and ultimatly leading to Campo di Fiori, an old and well known piaza in town where our hotel was located. we ate lunch at this really cool (as well as cheap) little pizza place that was playing all kinds of hispanic music. we met up with marco at around 2 pm, he then took us on a walk that i will never forget.

the rain did not matter. the first major thing we saw was Piazza Nouvona, an old hipodrome converted onto a great piazza space during the 17th century. next was the Pantheon. i could not believe my eyes, the rome that i had only seen in books was now in front of me. i could smell it, touch it, hear it. and to make things better, the rain had seized. the pantheon was beautiful. how can a building that is 2000 years old still be standing in perfect condition?



from there we headed towards the Foro Romano. this practically where the center rome would have been 2000 years ago. the place is full of ruins such as constantine's arch and constantine's basilica. from there we just walked a few meters to the COLOSEUM. wow what a sight that was.... everything was perfect. it was so beautiful that my words are not worthy. the afternoon was beautiful so we decided to take the walk all the way to the famous tempietto, the church built on the spot where st peter was crusified. on the way we passed by the circus maximun-- back in the roman days this hypodrome could hold about 250,000 spectators, too bad all that exists today is a boring grassy field. to our surprise the tempietto was closed. that made me real sad. oh well, the view from the site was well worth the hike and it was a perfect way to end the day.

monday, feb. 20th. today was a pretty cool day. so as it always is, i stayed up all night last night to finish up the project for studio. yes, i pulled an all nighter in italy; i have a feeling it won't be the last one either.

my group presented at about 11:30 in the a.m.; it went really well. all of our drawings were finished, well drawn and they were very informational too. if i was my teacher i would give myself an A++++. well, maybe we didn't do that well, but we did well enough.

during the day, we started to get a hint of what was apparently waiting for us in rome. RAIN. yeah, the rumor is going around that the whole time we are in rome it is supposed to be raining. damn. oh well, we'll see about that. the cool thing about the rain today was that there was a moment when the clouds were peirced and the rays of the sun could touch the surface of the earth again. and there it was -- the coolest rainbow i have seen. i know it sounds kind of lame, but i guess you just had to be there. everything was perfect during that moment -- the light, the temperature, the smell, and the sounds. i guess for me it just symbolized the beauty that was was about to come starting tomorrow. eventhough everyone keeps saying its going to be sucky because of the rain, i believe that i will find myself surrounded by beauty and nothing else will matter. tomorrow we depart to Rome. i'll be there for about a week. i hope to god that it is as beautiful as it has been in my dreams... ciao.