Ok, so here goes the second part to my really long update.
Orvieto - About an hour and a half, by train, south, towards Rome, is a town on a cliff known as Orvieto. This is the place where the other K-State students are "studying." If you arrive here by train you have to take a funiculari (something like a tram that goes up slopes) to reach the actual city. Then once you reach the stop of the funiculari you have to take a bus to the main piazza space outside the Duomo. A lot of Italy is like this. Before we took the bus to the piazza we were given a tour of an old papal palace that sits on the edge of the cliff overlooking the valley below. After this we had time to grab some food and coffee which was much needed as we next proceeded to tour a giant well. The well used a double helix staircase to get to the bottom and the passages down were big enough for donkeys to traverse them. If I had to guess I'd say the thing was 8 to 10 stories deep. Needless to say after climbing back up the well everyone was pretty beat. And this was all before the actual tour of the city started.
After a short bus ride we arrived at the main piazza space outside Orvieto's Duomo. The cathedral here is one of my favorites so far mostly because of the front facade that's covered in really awesome sculptures and gold leaf so it changes appearances throughout the day as the sun hits it differently. The inside had some really cool frescoes by an artist I can't remember because half the time I don't listen to the tour guides.
After the church we went on a tour of the caves beneath the city. This was pointless. The most exciting thing we saw down there was an old pigeon farm. Apparently, Italians raise pigeons to eat them, or use too or something.
We were then released for lunch. After walking around for a little bit we found a pizza place. Pizza should always be followed by gelato which we did next and sat on some sunny steps in a piazza and sketched till it was time to leave. The end.
Siena - The most miserable field trip day by far. We had been lucky up to this point with the weather and our field trips. It had been cold before which had been fine, but on this day it was cold and raining, all day. It didn't help that most of the things we did were outside. I'm sure Sienna is very nice and I'd like to go back when the weather is better but my image of the town is slightly tainted by that day. We saw some more churches here and a museum. Nothing really too exciting. I did purchase my first soccer paraphernalia here, a Inter Milan beanie. I'm not necessarily an Inter fan but by this point we had booked our trip to Milan and the soccer game there.
The Milan Excursion - For some reason, K-State never takes a trip to Milan in the months that we are here. Therefore, a group of us decided we were going to check it out over the weekend. In our planning we discovered that the Ferrari Museum was kind of on the way so we decided to do that. Ryan, one of my roomates here, is a big soccer fan and Inter Milan happened to be playing that weekend also, so we decided to hit that up too. This was all planned by us, the transportation, the hostel, everything, and it was also our first time doing it so there was bound to be some adventures. Here's how it went:
We left Castiglion Fiorentino at 8:30 in the morning on Friday the 11th of February. We took the train to Arezzo and were going to catch an IC (Inter-City) train to Bologna. We had a little layover in Arezzo so we walked around, got some breakfast (chocolate croissant and cappuccino, the usual) and sat on the steps of the cathedral there and sketched for about an hour. We caught our train on time so, so far so good. On the train I learned how to play hearts. We arrived in Bologna around lunchtime and had about 30 minutes before the train left for Modena. We grabbed some humongous slices of pizza and mountainous cups of gelato (so much gelato in fact that I couldn't eat it all, Cara was kind enough to finish it off). Caught or train again and were off to Modena (you have to stop here if you want to get to Ferrari). Side note about Modena, if you can avoid it, do. Probably the sketchiest city to date (besides Naples, but I'll get to that in a different post). The way I described it was that Fascism must have hit it pretty hard. There was very little that was Italian about it. We encountered our first hiccup here, of course. We had to take a bus from the train station, to the bus station. However, we weren't sure which stop was the bus station. Apparently it was the second and we ended up, accidentally, taking the bus all the way to the end. Got a lovely tour of Modena I suppose. There was a bus driver who took pity on us and took us back to the bus station. Our little "tour" made us miss an earlier bus to Ferrari so we had to wait another hour or so before we could catch another. Luckily there was a little cafe next to the bus station. So we grabbed some beers while we waited. Eventually we caught the bus to Ferrari and got there no problems. The Museum was pretty neat but rather small and anti-climatic. Not sure if it was worth the pain that is Modena. We caught the bus back to train station and after all was said and done, we got stuck here for another hour and a half because we had just missed an earlier train. So, had our first McDonald's in Italy experience. Sadly the McDonald's in the train station in Modena, is the best thing about Modena. After a happy meal (best bang for your buck as McDonald's is rather expensive here) and a one euro milkshake we caught the train out of Modena and were finally headed to Milan. About 3 hours later we arrived in Milan. It was now 11:15 at night and we still had to take the Metro to get to our hostel. The metro (Milan's subway system) is really nice and convenient. The only bad thing I saw was a guy peeing on a wall in the station when we got there. It happens. After about a 30 minute metro ride we arrived at the hostel which was kind of out in the burbs. But it was cheap. We were rarely here anyways so little to be said on the hostel. All in all, starting at about 8:30 in the morning and arriving to the hostel in Milan at midnight we were traveling for around 16 hours. Rough.
The next day we took the metro back into the city center. The Duomo in Milan is french gothic and really pretty. The piazza out front is filled with people trying to get you to by bird seed to feed the pigeons. They're really forceful and will actually grab your hands and try to put the bird seed in it and then make you pay for it. They got Ryan. The best tactic is to keep your hands in your pockets. After we checked out the inside of the Duomo we decided to check out the top of the Duomo. This was probably one my favorite parts of the trip. It was sunny out that day and the top of the Duomo in Milan is basically the roof. It's really cool, you can see the Alps from the top. After the church we went to check out the university which was a let down. It turned out to be a big ugly, red buidling. But, there was an awesome kebab place next to it. I hadn't had a kebab yet and made the mistake of getting two. Kebab's are rotissere cooked lamb that is shaved off put with some lettuce tomato onion, a maynoise like sauce and hot sauce all on a bun or in a tortilla. Uber fullness ensued. We walked off lunch on our way to a medieval castle that was ok, then through a park. We ran into some American girls that were studying in Barcelona and talked to them for a bit about what to hit up when we're there for spring break. There was a carnival going on also, so, naturally, we rode some bumper cars. It was gelato time after bumper cars and then we walked, basically around the entire city and ended with some shopping. I got a Inter t-shirt for the game that night. After a long day in the city we headed back out to our hostel and got ready for the game. The good thing about the location of our hostel was that it was close to the stadium. On our way to the stadium we stopped at a little stand and grabbed some Tenants. Side note on Tenants. It's the size of a normal beer. It tastes decent. And the best part is its 9 % alcohol, so you don't have to spend a lot of money. The stadium in Milan puts many football stadiums in America to shame. It's humongous. Our seats were right behind the super fan section. It was pretty crazy, they even set off flares in the stadium and wave huge flags the entire time which can get in the way of seeing. The game kinda sucked because Inter wasn't playing a very good team so they had there second team in and scored early then played keep away for the rest of the game. By the end of the game my buzz had worn off so we seeked out a supermarket to get some wine and hang out in the hostel. But we were unsuccessful. So it was bedtime.
The last day of the excursion we checked out of the hostel around 10 and took the metro back to the Milan train station, which I forgot to mention is beautiful. It kind of reminded me of home because it resembles, at least in size, Union Station in Kansas City. From the train station we planned our trip to Lake Como and then back home. We had a little bit of time before the train left so, more kebab. We also purchased some cheap wine for the trip. The weather this day had turned bad. It was foggy and rainy. Probably not the best setting to see Lake Como, but actually, it gave it a really surreal, mystical feeling when we were there. It was off season so a lot of things were closed but we walked around and took a ferry to Belagio. We drank some wine by the shore and caught the ferry back to Varenna where we came in. We hurriedly ate some pasta and caught the train back to Milan. The train was late which made us late getting back to Milan where we had to sprint to catch the train back to Castiglion. We had the conductor hold the train for a couple unnamed stragglers. The train ride back was uneventful. It was an IC train again so we had assigned seats. We had a little cart this time. Had a couple beers and some wine, sketched. It was a good time.
We got back to Castiglion around 9 on Sunday. You would think the story ends here but when we got back we were all hungry so we went to a local pizza place and well got pizza and beer. Great way to cap off a trip.
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