Sonlight Core H
Week 6E -Jan 30-Feb 5, 2017
Traveling-Bologna to Florence to Rome, Italy
I will put a few pix in here, but I am going to do individual posts for each place we visited. For example, one post for the Uffuzi Museum, one post for the Duomo, one post for the Vatican City...so later when I want to look up pictures of a specific place we visited I can type that place into my Search box, at the top of the home page, and go directly to that place and not have to scroll through a lot of typing.
As we are traveling, we aren't doing our Sonlight or homeschooling books. For bible, Dh has been reading from the book of Romans! He thought that was appropriate considering where we were! Sharing where we went each day this week:
Monday: Bologna, Italy (1-31-17)
After an AMAZING breakfast, we went to the San Pietro Cathedral. We happened to go in when there was a small series going on and they were singing! Wow, that was so beautiful to hear inside a marble cathedral, so different compared to our little churches in the U.S.
Then we went to the Archiginnasio---the oldest college in the world. We really were curious about their Anatomy Room. They had/have this big marble slab on a table in the middle of the room, with wooden bleacher seating all around it in a circle, so everyone could watch and learn anatomy by watching autopsies being done.
We walked to the Basilica Di Saint Domenico, which was amazing from the outside, but all the doors were locked. We did get to see a Dominican Monk go in a side building. There were Michelangelo's sculptures inside, but we didn't get to see them.
Bologna has a lot of old gates, and old city walls. We managed to see quite a lot of them during our stay. We saw the Piazza de Porta Castigilone, by part of the old city wall.
Giardini Margherita Park...very lovely and lots of very old, very large Sycamore trees. On the trip, we saw two European Robin's and one was at this park. These are such cute little birds. We also came across the first of many two-toned crows. The crows that we saw in Italy were not black, like in the U.S.; they were gray and black- two-toned. The crows did sound the same as ours though! This park had a pond, with two bridges that crossed over it, with Mallard ducks and one white goose. I was happy to see a little restaurant in the park, so I could finally use a restroom. My biggest complaint is the complete lack of bathrooms in Italy. So much wonderful coffee, and so little restrooms!! Bad mix!
We went to the Church of the Basilica of Saint Stefano; which was full of smokey incense! This is one of the seven churches grouping, all together in one spot. Now there are only four churches active in the group. The churches were built on the foundation of a temple to Isis, dating back to the 8th century...it really felt old! They also had a sculpture of Jesus based off of the Holy Shrowd.
We also went back to the Porta Ravegnana Square where there are two popular old towers. The taller one is the Asinelli Tower built in 1119, and the shorter tower, the Garisenda Tower, which was built in the 12th Century. I shared a link above, if you want more info on it.
We were on our own for dinner, so we went back to the same restaurant we had gone to last night; the Pino, and had another great meal! We spent more time enjoying the square and view of the Basilica of San Petronio, the very church that set off Martin Luther to the extravagancies of the Catholic church. This is one amazing church, with such an interesting history: http://www.basilicadisanpetronio.org/
Tuesday: Bologna (2-1-17)
Tuesday, Dh had to work, so Dd and I hit the town without him. We got up early to have breakfast with him. On our walk to the Museo Di Palazzo Poggi, I bought Dd a really nice panini sandwich for her lunch. I really liked this museum, but Dd didn't find it as interesting as I did. In particular, the Anatomy Museum part had was models intended to teach students about anatomy. So they had full-size skeletons, muscles, organs, hands, ears, babies, wombs...all made out of wax. One whole room was about babies- and their delivery, and how it can go wrong, presumably so the students will know how to help deliver the baby safely. I think this room was Dd's LEAST favorite room!!!
Dd and I also found the Piazza di Porta Macarella, another old gate and the Botanical Gardens. We walked around the Teatro Communale and the university.
When Dh came back to the hotel room we all went out for dinner with his work friends at "O 51". We went to a fancy restaurant and had a great meal. Everything I ate was fantastic, but my lasagna...which wasn't really that good?~ Go Figure, lasagna in Italy wasn't great!! We managed to walk by the Basilica of San Petronio at least once per day in Bologna. The big bummer was that the Fountain of Neptune was being repaired and we couldn't see it.
After dinner we all walked around and enjoyed Piazza Maggiore, to end our day. It was midnight when we reached our hotel!~
Wednesday:last day in Bologna (2-1-17)
Dh, was supposed to work this day, but since they accomplished everything in one day he was able to sleep in with us. We didn't get down to breakfast until 10am!
We enjoyed walking around Bologna, and found another church--Chiesa Di San Francesco. We walked all around it, but never found an open door. We decided to sit down in the front of the building and ate our snacks. Later we went to Via Portanova and found the San Salvator church, which we were able to go in!!!! When you go inside the have the big 'main' floor that takes up the middle of the church, and then they have these little side area's that focus on someone specific, and those little area's are called "cathedrals." This church had four cathedrals on the left side, and four cathedrals on the right side, a total of eight cathedrals in total. This church was built in the early 1600's. There were about twenty people sitting in the middle praying, and it was so quiet in there!
We happened to walk by the Piazza Franklin Roosevelt square---nothing there to signify that but the little sign on the side of a building...that was odd! You'd think there would be a sculpture or garden or something, but nothing else!
We went by the Plazzo D, Accursio---which was a neat building because it looks like a medieval castle. It has a "swallow tail" as the bottom of the building is wider than the middle or top.
We enjoyed the colorful Piazza Maggiore and got Dh and Dd a panine sandwich for lunch. We to the Dua Torre to see a souvenir shop and saw the two towers again!
In the evening we found San Martino - a gothic church that was just beautiful inside. It had LOTS of gorgeous paintings. We had walked by this church on our first day and I hadn't had the courage to go in, and had regretted it ever since. We just happened to walk by it when the doors were open and we jumped at this second chance.
For dinner, we met up with a work connection, who took us to a really nice, quiet restaurant. Their back room had all these paintings dedicated to specific people/events...like 9/11, Princess Diana, astronauts....it was all surrounded with gold leaf moldings. The food was also really good! We got back to our hotel room by 9:15, as we had to get up early on Thursday for our train ride to Florence. Dd's Fitbit said she had walked 17,710 steps and 7.73 miles! I had taken 447 pictures! It was a really good day! We ****really**** loved Bologna!
Bologna was our favorite city b/c it was totally NOT a tourist town. There were some, but not many! The prices for everything was really cheap. A panini sandwich was usually 2 to 2.50 Euro's, but in Florence and Rome it was at least 5 Euro's for a sandwich that wasn't near as good. One of my favorite things about Bologna was all the DOGS! Cute dogs in cute coats! It was winter, maybe 40 degree's on average, and so the people were dressed like they were at the slopes in Colorado! Woolen hats, huge coats- all zipped up, gloves, scarves....and of course they had to dress their dogs in warm coats for the extreme (sarcasm) cold too! I never saw the same dog coat twice, and was amazed at how stylish each coat and leash was! Italian people are known for being VERY stylish, and they treated their dogs with the same loving care!
Thursday (2-2-17): Bologna to Florence:
Highlights: The Duomo, Michelangelo's Pieta; Donatello's David, and the leather district
We had a train ride from Bologna to Florence! Florence hotel was Art Atelier http://www.hotelartatelier.com/.
The morning train ride was nice, we had leather seats, but the view was mostly in a tunnel, so we didn't get to see as much of Italy's countryside as we wanted. Years ago, Dh and I took a bus ride to Florence and it was so beautiful. There was acre after acre of sunflower blooms, and grape orchards. We had arrived 50 minutes early at the station, so we enjoyed watching all the people commute. We took a taxi to our hotel. To our surprise, our hotel had our room ready and we could put all our luggage in our room and freshen up. The weather in Florence was at least 10 degrees warmer than northern Italy (Bologna). We stopped in a lovely nice church before we made it to the Duomo. The Duomo is one of the biggest tourist sights in Florence (except maybe Michelangelo's, David). We bought tickets for the Duomo, but had to wait a few hours before our turn was up. We walked around Florence as we waited. We stopped by the Leather District, and I managed to barter, barter, barter the dickens out of some man and got a wonderful new purse fo 1/4 of the cost! He even told me: "I like the way you bargain." Ha! That was fun!
In the afternoon, it was time for our ticket entry into the Duomo. We could have been inside the church that whole time for free! Wish we had known that earlier!! Our tickets were to walk all the stairs up to the bell tower, but that didn't happen. It was a tiny, cramped little tunnel to get up there, while all the people coming down had to squeeze past you! It was a nightmare! If I were alone it might have been fun, but not with a 6'3'' husband and a teenage daughter! We definitely didn't get our money out of that ticket!
We also bought tickets for the Duomo Museum (4pm), and that was super interesting and we all loved that! we got to see Michelangelo's, Pieta and a Donatello sculpture of David.
We went back to our hotel room, to rest a little before heading out for dinner, but couldn't muster up any more energy for the day, so we ate from my snack bags and stayed in. Our first day in Florence was nice, but totally crowded with tons of tourists. Mind you, it is FEBRUARY, and it drizzled all day and there were still masses of people everywhere! This is to "low" season, or 'off' season for tourists. We've been in Florence and Rome before; in the warm months, and February was better; but it is still busy! We never heard any English in Bologna, except our waitresses, but English was heard as soon as we got off the train in Florence. We heard LOTS of people speaking English---American's, British, Australian....Lots of different countries represented in Florence. Also, there were street vendors everywhere! They were selling umbrella's and selfie-sticks every five feet! We were constantly bombarded with people calling out to us, "Hello---" and we had to learn that we should just keep walking because there was no end to sellers calling out to us.
Our first breakfast in our new hotel was a bit disappointing. Our last hotel gladly made espresso after espresso individually for us, but this hotel has a kind of machine that you push buttons - like a vending machine--at the breakfast bar--to get your coffee fix. The coffee was decent but not nearly as good as our last hotel. The one benefit was that at least they had yummy baked beans and tomatoes on their spread. Another benefit was the plain yogurt spread--with a wide assortment of nuts to put in the yogurt. They had the following seeds: sunflower, pumpkin, flax, sesame, and peanuts--it was good! All their breads were okay but not as good at Bologna.
After breakfast we went to San Lorenzo, the leather shops, to buy some gifts. We found Giz a nice wool/cashmere shawl/cape/cover and Grampy a really fun t-shirt of a bicycle wearing a mustache! We bought Dd a nice leather purse, and she bought a few leather bracelets for a few friends and her piano teacher/band teacher. We had to pre-order our tickets to go to the Uffizi museum, and we figured out how to do that---so complicated!
On the way to the Uffizi we stopped and enjoyed the Piazza della Signor. This area, or square, was full of sculpture's - even on giant Michelangelo's David! We bought some sandwiches and took a ton of pictures! It was a nice area to visit and absorb, though there were a LOT of tourists.
The Uffizi...this museum is comparable to the Louvre in Paris France, though I'd say 1/3 of the size perhaps, best guess. It has some amazing things in it, but you can get through most of the museum in a day, and you could never say that about the Louvre. Some highlights of this museum: Botticelli's, The Birth of Venus among other Botticellli's...some Michelangelo...Durer...Lippi...lots of Greek and Roman art...Caravaggio's Medusa (maybe 6 Caravaggio paintings there)...room after room of the most famous paintings and sculptures.
Dd's favorite painting was by Caravaggio--The Sacrifice of Isaac.
After the Uffizi we walked back to the Piazza del Signori, then to the most famous bridge in Florence, the Ponte Vecchio bridge--just to see it for ourselves. We stopped in some street shopping area's and found Dd a tree necklace and two of those beautiful Mirano glass necklaces for me. We had to go back to our hotel to rest a bit, and put our feet up!
Later we asked at the front desk where we could go for some really great pizza and they reserved us a spot at a restaurant just down the street from our hotel. We first tried Italy's version of "Garlic Bread" and was pretty disappointed--they brought our 4 slices of regular toast with a little olive oil and garlic on top. There were a few herbs dashed on top, but it wasn't fabulous. Luckily our pizza was really good! We ordered two pizza's, as they are way smaller in Italy than in U.S. We had a four cheese pizza and a Margarita pizza with spicy salami---yum! Little did we know that this was going to be our last great meal, as we headed to Rome in the morning.
Dd's fitbit had 12,861 steps for the day.
Saturday (2-4-17)
Florence to Rome (our last stop!)
We got up early, ate, and walked to the train station. It was amazing to see Florence quiet; but it wasn't even 8am yet. When we got to the train station the quiet was over and a hive of busy bee's was going strong! We arrived about 40 minutes early and enjoyed watching the crowds. This train ride was a much better view of the country! I really enjoyed watching the farms, fields, tree's, homemade greenhouses aplenty. There were not any sunflowers at this time of year, but lots of empty tilled fields. The path was very barren, not many big cities or towns. I saw one flock of sheep, a few solar panels, and not too many cars on the roads. It was a quiet Saturday on most of the area's. When we got off the train we headed for a taxi...which in itself was a big ordeal! Then the taxi really scammed us on his charge. He charged us a "Luggage Tax!" Oy! He was awful! But, 10 Euro's later he dropped us off at the Hotel Colosseum http://www.hotelcolosseum.com/en/. Our room was not ready, so we had to put our luggage in a back closet and hope for it's safety.
We went to San Pietro In Vincoli church where we saw Michelangelo's MOSES schulpture...awesome! The whole church was full of interesting paintings. We had to walk up a bunch of steps to get to the top of this big hill to get there--and there was a man playing his accordion in the stair walkway, playing nice music. This church was built specifically to house Saint Peter's chains form his time in prison before he was executed. They have the chains in a glass box, well-lit, in the center of the church. It was strange to see Peter's chains, and for me, to see part of his physical past.
Next we went to the Monumento Nazionale a Vittorio Emanuele II--or the National Monument to Victor Emmaunuel II. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altare_della_Patria It is between the Piazza Venezia and the Capitoline Hille. Dh said it's nickname is the Big White Elephant because it is a huge building of white marble in the skyline...it sure does stand out!! It seems the first king of Italy wanted to really leave behind a huge testament to his power and had this huge building built to honor himself!
We went by some old square that had a number of old columns up from Julius Caesar's time...very interesting area left of odd artifacts. Then we made our way to the Trevi Fountain , which for a rainy February day, was totally packed!!! It started raining so hard we took shelter in the San Pietro Di Brazza church--an old Baroque church. It was a really lovely old church until the nun's made all of us get out! It is odd to be pushed out of churches throughout Italy...we could never figure out exactly why we were told (in Italian) to leave these churches. The way they shoo'd us off you'd think we were rats! Not very lovingly, I'll tell you that!
Next we went to the Quirinale, which use to be the pope's palace, but now is the home and offices of the president of Italy. We got to see the changing of the guards there (like we did in London years ago). Up next, we saw the Quattro Fontane, which are four fountains at an intersection. As you are walking down the streets in Rome you can come across just about anything! Dd and Dh saw a pizza restaurant and decided we should eat there...oy, what a mistake! Long story short---these people were awful, they charged us 2 Euro's each to sit down! 4 Euro's for a small plastic bottle of water...the food wasn't very good; it just was all around BAD. From here on out we went to the grocery stores and bought our food and ate picnic style.
Everywhere we went there were tourists and strange people trying to sell you stuff. I had one man, as he was trying to sell roses, use the bunch of roses and kind of hit me with the roses to get my attention....keep walking....umbrella sellers were literally combing the streets! There was always a few people shaking empty cups at your and begging for money at every place we'd go to. We were constantly bombarded with people wanting money for one reason or another at every turn. Dd was really, really, really NOT liking the attacks of her personal space! She was "done" with Rome before noon!
After our pizza lunch we decided to go ahead and walk the little ways left to see the Spanish Steps since we were so close already. Dd really just wanted a hotel room! But, we went ahead and checked that off our list. Dh decided Dd needed a gelato to make up for all the walking she did. Then we had a long walk back to our hotel. We found a grocery store close to our hotel and went in there to buy our dinner. We bought a baguette, package of spicy salami, mortadella (Italian bologna), sliced mozzarella, a big bag of mixed salad, potato chips, Coca-Cola Light, and a lemon soda for Dd. Our pizza lunch at that horrible restaurant cost 40 Euro's and our grocery store stop cost 14 Euro's and we had lots left over from our picnic!
Our new hotel room may not have had the nicest beds, we got three single beds, but the shower was awesome! It was a big wide shower with one of those 'rain" heads.
Dd's Fitbit for the day: 14, 100 steps, which is 6.15 miles, and 35 flights of stairs.
Sunday (2-5-17) Rome
For the first time, our hotel's bread/croissants were not awesome! I was kind of glad that I didn't have any temptation to eat any gluten once we got in Rome. I took one bite of the croissant and it was just 'dud' and I moved on to better food options. The previous two hotels had awesome breads, danish, pie's, rolls, and the like...but, not here.
After breakfast, we went to the Pantheon, then back to our grocery store for lunch picnic supplies. It was decided that our picnics' were better. Then we went to the grocery store first thing to get our lunch bought before heading to our sites. We walked past the Quirinale (the president of Italy's section of town, as it is a very large area), past lots of fountains and lots of military guards (always with semi-automatic guns abreast!), Santa Maria Sophia Minerva, and the Minera church in this square was really beautiful. At the church, we were kicked out again. Not just us, but all the people visiting it. Outside there was a really interesting statue of an elephant with a tall point--really high. Dh read the story behind the elephant, but I'm not remembering it right now.
We found the Omnri Tourist office to pick up our tickets/passes to see Vatican City, St. Peters..etc. They were not very helpful, but we did get our tickets and bus passes.
Eventually, we made our way to our goal---The Pantheon and all the crowds! There were horses and carriages, lots of people smoking cigarettes and cigars, wearing loads of cologne and perfume, crowds and crowds! and military guards too! We ate our picnic lunch at the Piazza Navone and fed the pigeons too! Dd wanted to sit right next to the police to feel safe!
After the Pantheon we went looking for the 'yellow' tour bus, which was an adventure! The tour bus took us to the Basilica Santa Maria Maggiore. We had to go through serious screening - backpacks scanned, walking through metal detectors-- to get into the church. It was packed with tourists! This was the most tourists in a church that we had seen. This church certainly didn't feel uplifting in any way. It was more like a cross between an art museum and a souvenir shop. After we left we went back to our grocery store to shop for dinner. It was Sunday and we needed a short day. We ate in our room and then went to the top of our hotel, on their balcony, for a beautiful view of Rome from above. It amazes me how many domes you see in the skyline. We still haven't seen any Christian churches in all our time in Italy. End of this week!Tomorrow--Vatican City, Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel.....what a week!
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