inside Rhodes

The red tiled passage used to be a private passage for aristocrats to travel between their palace and their offices (now the Uffizi Gallery) over the Ponte Vecchio (Florence’s only bridge that survived WWII bombing) without having to mingle with the commoners. Petty but pretty, eh? I took this shot from inside the Uffizi, which houses some extraordinarily famous art, including Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus and La Primavera (see full painting), and works by Raffaello Sanzio (aka Raphael, the purple-banded Ninja Turtle), Caravaggio (notably Medusa), Rosso Fiorentino, and Parmigianino (Madonna of the Long Neck).

::CLICK THUMBNAIL TO ENLARGE AND STEP INSIDE::

In front of Palazzo Vecchio, the Old Palace, from Uffizi balcony

Volterra, Toscana: appropriately built on a hill of earth.

Vineyard… the wine food group is an important part of daily nutrition, ask any Italian. If you are interested in learning more about Italian wine, let me know! I’d be happy to help.

Piazza della Vittoria! Favorite slanty trees in the city, reminded me of home…

Now for some graffiti mania:

Regrettably, I never captured one of the best stencils that I saw, but maybe you can imagine a stencil of Pavarotti (of the Three Tenors) with his arms spread in a gesture of song, “BIG LUCIANO”.

Some photos of from my trip across Tuscany to Cecina that I consider must sees:

 

“The White Beach” of Cecina

Well, this is it, the end of the rabbit hole. All spring semesters have to end some time, and this one took a lifetime plus two and still went by so quickly that my wheels are left spinning. What do I make of the whole thing? These four months of breaking and re-making an entire perspective of the global community? What a question to have to ask yourself…right now I’m trapped in a state of General Amazement. I’m back at home, looking at the final results, the last photos, still using an Italian dictionary to write e-mails to my new buddies. There’s no doubt that there has been growth, change, and some metamorphosis involved here, but coming home is entirely too distracting to put my finger on what that change is, yet. My friends who have travelled abroad described something like this to me, but it is hard to believe how disorienting your own home can be. I’m happy to be home (Baton Rouge, LA), there are things about the US (and people!) that I missed while I was away, but the line between the familiar and the unfamiliar is suddenly blurry… am I more familiar with how I’ve learned to do things this year, or with how I used to do things before that? I think the confusion will work itself out quietly in another week or two, but it sure is an odd sensation! For instance, reaching for the light switch in my bedroom, my hand always reaches a foot too low on the wall– where an Italian switch would be!

Stuff I Already Miss About Italy: the food, the chivalry, the Arno River, the shoes, the cappuccinos, the McD’s of quality, the vaulted ceilings and doorways, the sea.

Stuff I Never Thought I’d Miss About America, but DID: grass and big trees, Payless shoes, Mexican food, stand-up comedy (all right I expected that), American movies not dubbed in Italian, affordable beer, football, pervasive allusions to Cajun French.

Which reminds me: cross your fingers for tonight’s last baseball game in the super regional series, my very own LSU vs. Irvine! Geaux Tigers!!!

You can expect a BR update very soon…this is your Italian correspondent signing out,

Jenny