Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Spring Break + Preceding

The last two weeks have been the most eventful of my life. They consisted of a short class trip to northern Italy, followed by spring break. So for the sake of this blog, any readers, & my fingers, I'm going to sum up the highlights with as few details as possible.... I spent 13 days + 12 nights living out of a backpack traveling through 3 European countries on a total of 21 trains & more than a dozen buses/subways/railways, stayed in 6 hotels/hostels, ate many of my meals out of a Coop (grocery store) shopping bag, took a few short of 1000 pictures, & experienced buildings and places I've been dying to see for years. The first 4 days--starting on March 9--our class went to Verona, Vicenza & Venice. I loved these cities so much. THINGS we saw: Castelvecchio Museum (by Carlo Scarpa), Juliet Capulet's house and famous balcony, the ancient Verona Arena, Villa Rotonda (by Andrea Palladio), a cemetery by Carlo Scarpa, Doge's Palace, San Marco + Piazza, Frari Basilica (one of my favorites), Rialto Bridge, San Giovanni e Paolo, Santa Maria dei Miracoli. After the class trip ended, Saturday the 13th our spring break officially began. It was the craziest, busiest, greatest, most travel-packed week ever imaginable! I spent the week with 4 other kstaters, and after Venice we traveled to Milan, and Chur & Lugano Switzerland. Aside from seeing, sleeping in, and traveling to & from those 3 cities, we took day trips throughout the week to: Padua(Italy), Zurich(Switzerland), Vals(Switzerland), & Ronchamp(France)..OH what we saw.... In Padua: a 9/11 Monument, the University, Cafe Pedrocchi. In Milan: the grand train station, an A.C.Milano Futbol game, the Duomo, a large 'City Life' project (currently in the process of being constructed) by Zaha Hadid, Daniel Libeskind + others. So, similar to how I gushed about seeing St. Peter's, the Duomo in Milan is #2 on my love list; we spent 2 1/2 hours on the top of that beauty. And the soccer game.. well, it was by far the funnest sporting event I've ever been to. Those Italians love their futbol! We all bought Red A.C.Milano scarves to represent... we still looked American. Ronald Dhino & David Beckham played; Milan scored in the last minute of the game to win 1-0; and Beckham ((sigh)) tore his achilles tendon (?), now has to have surgery, and we may very well have seen him play his very last professional game of his life... After Milan, well, we traveled and saw: the teardrop chapel (San Benedetg) by Peter Zumthor, the FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) building, the Thermal Baths in Vals by Peter Zumthor (most relaxing 7 hours of my life!), Notre Dame du Haut by Le Corbusier. Other than all these highlights, every single city we went to was outrageously gorgeous. I have a ton of pictures, like I said, and I'll upload them asap!!

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