Rome and Bologna!

Buona sera a tutti!

For all of you who are waiting patiently to see photos of your children, I promise that tomorrow I will collect a bunch of stories and photos from the students who went to Lucca yesterday and Bologna today.  From what I hear from the staff, the group is having a ball. Yesterday, the group strolled around the walls of Lucca, visited a contemporary art museum, and went to the central church of Lucca.  Last night, after returning to Florence by train, the group took an evening stroll and got gelato in celebration of Alex's birthday.  

Then today, this group travelled to Bologna by chartered bus.  With its covered, marble-paved promenades and its red brick, Bologna is a striking city; quite different from Florence, which is only an hour and a half away.  The students enjoyed the famous cooking of Bologna (Bolognese sauce, anyone? or what about the flavorful, savory sliced meats available in the city, after which American bologna/baloney is named).  In the afternoon they split into small groups for various site-visits, which I will describe in better detail tomorrow.

As for Rome, last night the group climbed the hill to a look-out point called Gianicolo, from which the cupola of San Pietro, the roof of the Pantheon, the Palazzo dei Medici, and the Altar of the Nations were visible.  After the climb, we wandered back down into Trastevere, a neighborhood that Antonio compared to New York's Brooklyn--full of hip, young people with plenty of restaurants and open piazzas in which to sit and people-watch.  Here we split up to eat dinner, and then we enjoyed each other's company in Trastevere's main square of Santa Maria.  From there we headed back to the hotel, truly pooped.

This morning we set out early, descending into the creepy Bone Church, whose basement is decorated ornately with the skulls, femurs, jaw bones, vertebrae, etc. of human skeletons.  In the final room, there was a plaque that read: "What you are now, we were once; what we are now, you too will be." A sobering reminder of our own mortality.

After walking through the super chic neighborhood of Rome, where you find the American Embassy and a handful of deluxe hotels and which was immortalized in Fellini's film of La Dolce Vita, we found ourselves in the garden of the Borghese family, which I would describe as Rome's Central Park (how many times have we used NYC analogies?  San Gimignano was the Manhattan skyline of the Medieval period, Trastevere was like Brooklyn, and Giardino Borghese was like Central Park, haha).  From there we entered into the Galleria Borghese which houses many awe-inspiring marble sculptures by Bernini  and many famous paintings of Raffael, Caravaggio, and Botticelli.  

I found Kent Allen in the gift shop buying postcards, one of which was the Caravaggio we had seen inside of the David and Goliath.  All he said was: "I think this is the most amazing painting I have ever seen."

Enough said.

Following our tour, we split up at the Spanish Steps for lunch and for free time.  When we met up again, we separated into our chosen afternoon activities, which were led by Antonio and Stefano, and some students opted to take more free time.  Stefano led me and three curious students to the English Cemetary, where Keats and Shelley are buried.  As we stood before Keats' gravesite, we each read a stanza of one of his poems from the 1820s. A couple that had made a pilgrimage to the site listened in and were quite moved by our young people taking such an interest in a great English poet.

Antonio led the students on a Caravaggio Tour, stopping in little-known churches to check out the work of the master painter.  Certainly on Monday the painting students will re-double their efforts in producing their work, as Caravaggio was a young man when he produced some of his greatest masterpieces.

We are going to meet up again in just a moment to walk to a new neighborhood for our dinner.

Thanks for reading--and if you feel so bold, leave comments, I'm sure the students would enjoy reading them!

Janet