**This was supposed to have loaded 3 days ago, so pretend it was.**
Well I’m back abroad again, so here come the blog posts! I’ve been moving around a lot this first week, so I haven’t really had a lot of time to sit and play on my computer to share what I’ve been doing.
After a very long 26 hours of traveling to Rome and another 4 hour train ride to Florence, I finally felt at home as I walked through the front doors of the PLUS Florence Hostel. A familiar atmosphere and one of the most beautiful cities in the world are enough to make anyone feel immensely better about an exhausting trip. The never-ending supply of scenic vistas and incredible works of art and architecture aren’t bad either.
June 24th is St. John’s Day when the Festa di San Giovanni Battista is held all day to celebrate the birth of the patron saint of the city, St. John the Baptist. There were parades through the streets all day long, a soccer tournament, and fireworks over the Arno from Piazzale Michelangelo. Needless to say, it was an exciting day. Tourists and Italians alike lined the streets to hear the drums, watch the processions, and fawn over the costumes and colors.
Around the festivities, I was able to catch up on many of the Florentine attractions that I missed out on last year. I spent a morning walking through the Pitti Palace and Boboli Gardens, climbed the Campanile, and saw the interior of Santa Croce and the Baptistry, Casa Buonarroti, the Laurentian Library, Museo Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore, S.S. Annunziata, and the cemetery at San Miniato al Monte. The last is not generally well known but is one of my favorite places in the city, just next to Piazzale Michelangelo, which I hiked to the top of everyday for both the view and the wonderful work out.
Of course I was able to repeat many favorite visits such as Santa Maria del Fiore, Piazza della Signoria, Ponte Vecchio, and San Lorenzo. Florence is a beautiful village in the midst of an expansive modern city, and I love every corner of it.
I was lucky to have my friend Andy visit me for a day before I had to leave. It was a welcomed relief to have a few hours of conversation in Italian to give my brain a break, and it was fun getting to show someone around the city that I love so much.
Now I am in Rome, a city of great and wonderful history and art, but I can only tolerate the hustle and bustle of so much activity for so long. I had an afternoon to walk quickly through the ancient city remains, but most of my time here has been in Tivoli. I spent this morning hiking in the beautiful Villa Gregoriana with rolling hills of trees and incredible grottos and waterfalls. After a speedy walk through Villa d’Este, which I’d been to before, I spent a very long time searching for the bus to take me to Hadrian’s Villa. Unfortunately I made four loops around a castle looking for the stop before I finally found it on a stop nowhere near where I was originally. Oh the beauty of miscommunication.
Hadrian’s Villa was lovely once I found the bus and made the long trek up a hill to find it. The ruins and views are as well preserved and fun to explore as I remember. Leave it to Hadrian to find such a gorgeous location in the middle of nowhere to build his country home.
As per usual with my form of traveling (making no plans and choosing to go places on a whim when I remember I want to see them), I did not previously buy a bus ticket to get back to Rome and had no clue where to find the train station from Hadrian’s Villa. So what did I do? I jumped on the back of a bus and hoped no one would kick me off! Luckily I made it close enough to Rome to hop on the metro to get back to Termini, but what an adventure. After hiking all day, translating directions in rapid fire Italian, and illegally utilizing public Italian transportation, I think the best thing to do is rest up for heading to Pompeii and the VCP tomorrow…with Gladiator (sorry Francesca…I’ll pretend Commodus has a beard).
Strength and honor.
