The end of the Classics Trip

May 16, 2007

Clos d’Huillas, France

The semester is finally over. We have been sequestered in a small Chateau in southern France, taking our final exams and writing our final papers and generally enjoying each other’s company and the wonderful weather and scenery that surrounds the place. Our trip ended up with a brief trip to Marseilles, and then on to Nimes, the site of the famous and very well preserved amphitheater, and finally to wine country, where the nearest grocery is a 45 minute car ride away, and the only thing that can be seen for miles around are the rolling hills of grapes and the small stone farmhouses that dot the countryside.

We spent the first day out of Florence in a train—one first to Genoa, and then a switch in Nice, I think, finally stopping in Marseilles. It was such a hassle to get on the train, and off the train, dragging our bulging bags behind us the whole way, but it was made a little bit better by knowing that it was one of the last times that we would ever have to put up with so much luggage. In one of the trains, where I was lucky enough to be with Stewart, we got the whole car to play all kinds of camp games, which had us completely entertained for the entire ride. Ambrice sat across from me, and I began a game where you had to guess if a pen “is a stick” by a certain code in the way I moved it. The trick of the game is distraction—I moved the pen in all kinds of directions and every time asked at the end if it was a stick. Most people move immediately to the movment, and ignore the way I phrased the question. Everytime I said the phrase “listen carefully,” the stick was a stick, and when I did not, it wasn’t. The phrase is such a throwaway that most people do not even listen to it—they just look at the hands and the pen. But those in my car gradually began to figure it out—all except Ambrice, who shouted “don’t you tell me to listen carefully! I DON’T KNOW!” at which point I told her the trick and we all started to laugh. We all emerged from that train ride laughing excitedly.

The trains were also equipped with electrical outlets, and Stewart and I passed much of the time on her and my new fixation; an early 90s drama called Party of Five. She had the whole first season on DVD, and as we whirred through the countryside, we got to see the soap opera lives of this group of five siblings, clad in stonewashed jeans that went up past their natural waists. It was really funny, and the show was pure fluff—something my mind really appreciated after all of those hours studying and thinking. And after a good many hours we arrived, to a cute little hotel that really resembled a hostel more than anything else, with bunk beds in the rooms and a vending machine that sold pasta in the lobby.

The next day, Stewart and I went on a search for a bikram yoga place she had looked up online. We grabbed a map and headed out into Marseilles, passing by the harbor area which was littered with masts and ships bobbing at anchor. The day was bright and beautiful, and we enjoyed each other’s company as we searched, passing by a number of pastry places, and the neoclassical architecture with the short roofs that is so characteristic of French architecture. Unfortunately, the yoga place was closed, so we made the most of it, walking down past the hotel to a small monastery right on the coast. It looked more like a fort than a monastery really, with imposing stone walls that tilted inwards, with small slitty windows dug deep into the stone. However, it was a picturesque location, right on the water, and we walked around it a bit before returning to the hotel and starting the day.

Toumazou introduced us to a woman who took us on a walking tour of Marseilles. She helped him in his Cyprus dig over the summer, and spoke English, French, and Greek—which seemed quite impressive to me. She took us to the archaeological museum in Marseilles, which we discovered was an ancient Greek colony, later overtaken by the Romans, and a center of trade. Some of the remains of ancient ships were sunk in the old, silted over harbor, and had been reconstructed inside of the museum, sunken wine jugs and all. It was impressive to see them there, but much of the rest of the museum contained everything that we had seen before—pottery, some statuary, and other relics of the ancient society. I found it hard to stay interested, Marseilles felt like it had so much more to offer than the small museum we were seeing.

Luckily, we were released early, and I wandered back to the hotel to do some internet, and exhausted, red and slept before going to dinner—a small burger joint where we had our first taste of approximated American food than we had had in months. It tasted so good! On the way back, Stewart and I stopped at a pastry shop, where we each got some delicious French dessert—I got a blueberry pie, and she got an apple tart, which we both ate with gusto. Then it was back to Party of Five, and sleep.

The following day was another train ride to Nimes, where we loaded a bus to see the Roman sites there—Pont du Gard, the amphitheater, and Maison Caree. Maison Caree is a perfect example of an Italic type temple, with an atrophied rear, emphasis on the front porch, and a high temple platform. The delicate Corinthian columns embed themselves into the side of the building, graying with pollution. We were given a short lecture and allowed to go inside; stepping up to the temple made us realize just how elaborate the place was. All over the upper mouldings of the temple were delicate scrolls of flowers and vines. We stood, still impressed after all of this time, before hopping back on the bus and blowing right by the amphitheater.

The amphitheater is very similar to the Colosseum, although it only has two stories. Still, the organizational structure that governed the larger structure is still present in the smaller one. Arches arrange themselves in a big circle, and the places between contain embedded columns of varying architectural orders. We did not get to go inside, so I did not get to see as much of the building as I would have liked, but we needed to get to the Chateau, and we quickly loaded onto the bus and moved on.

A few kilometers away we stopped again, to pull into the park that contains Pont du Gard, one of the best preserved ancient Roman aqueducts, that supplied water to the city of Nimes, and at this point spanned a low lying river valley. Rising up in a graduated series of arches, the aqueduct transported water over a huge distance to bring it into the city. Although much of the rest of the aqueduct is destroyed, here it was still used as a bridge, and after giving us a short lecture Dr Toumazou released us to walk around. We walked over the bridge and surveyed the French countryside, which fell away in front of us in a series of rolling hills that reminded me strongly of the mountains in North Carolina, but greener, and brighter. The sun was out, and we basked in it, excited to finally be retreating to a place where we could finally stay for a few days, and where we could finally cook and wake up whenever we pleased.

Unfortunately, the cooking part did not happen until a few days later. The day we were traveling was a national holiday for France, and before Dr Toumazou had realized it, we were stuck with all of the grocery stores closed. And we were about to drive out into the middle of nowhere. We spent the next two hours driving to town after town, searching for food, to no avail. Eventually, Toumazou decided to stop at a bakery and buy tons of bread, a solution that left us practically at our wits end. We had been eating bread for weeks and weeks—it had become the standard fare for breakfast, and we were sick of it, and to find out that we would be eating nothing but bread and water for the next 24 hours was more than enough to get us all really upset. But there was nothing we could do—he trundled back on the bus with loaves and loaves, and we each took our share and said nothing.

We arrived near the Chateau to find it at the top of a big hill in the middle of the rolling French countryside, so steep a climb that the bus we were riding could not take us to the top. The owner of the Chateau, a weathered French man known only to us as “The General,” offered to take some of our luggage. Toumazou took the opportunity to pile his stuff in and hopped in the passenger seat, leaving many of us to hike up the hill with all of our bags. Needless, I was not happy when I arrived, panting, at the top of the hill.

But the beauty of the place calmed me down—the chateau offered a nearly panoramic view of the hills and vine fields that patchworked all over the landscape, and the place contained not one, but two swimming pools, and a variety of little houses, all made of a light stone with small sturdy windows and creaky stairs. We got to pick our own houses and roommates, and Stewart and I picked each other, installing ourselves in the ground level of the Tower House, a recently renovated building with warm yellow walls, dark worn wood furniture, a small kitchen, and best of all, a washing machine.

We were set. We spent the next week and a half lounging by the cold pools, braving the water to tread water for about an hour everyday, making omlettes for breakfast lunch and dinner, running through the fields that spread below us, and taking our exams. Some days it was really hard to focus—the outdoors were so inviting, and knowing that we had a limited number of days made us all really want to relax. We had been going practically non-stop for the past four months, and really wanted a rest. So I compromised—running in the mornings, jumping into the pool to cool off, doing some work, swimming at noon and then preparing lunch, and working in the evenings outdoors on the covered porches or on the picnic tables in the sun, and then going to bed early. It was a great way to spend the time, and if I could pick anywhere on the travels so far to just have a relaxing vacation, that would be it. The Chateau was paradise.

Every run I went on was to a different, new, interesting place. Often I would catch bikers in their full out spandex gear on the road, and they would wave at me as they zoomed by. Other days, I would run past fields of wildflowers and inhale the scent. I would climb hills to beautiful vistas that overlooked the countryside. On one of the last days, I went on a run in a light rain, and feeling confident, turned off some of the main roads and proceeded to get myself thoroughly lost. After an hour of running, I finally spotted an old man doing some repairs to his house and asked him to help me. Although he spoke no English, and I spoke no French, he got out a map and pointed to a town close to him, which was one that I had run by earlier. Through wild gestures and lots of pointing, he asked if he should drive me there. I figured that at the very least the place might have a person who spoke English, or had heard of Clos d’Huillas, or something—so we ventured out in his tiny red and white pugeot until we reached the town.

Unfortunately the town was really more of a cluster of houses. I had abandoned almost all hope of finding the way home when he drove to a little campground that he must have thought I meant when I said “chateau” and made the gesture for sleeping. Luckily I recognized it—I had run by the same place a few days before and excitedly nodded and pointed to the left, where the road should run back toward the Chateau. And after a few kilometers on the road, it eventually did. The man was nice enough to drive me all of the way back up the hill to the Chateau, where I emerged in my running gear to the astonishment of everyone else on the trip, who proceeded to laugh at my predicament. I told the man thank you VERY MUCH, stepped out of the car, and walked back to my house.

That was probably the most exciting event at the Chateau, all of the rest of it was spent hanging out and talking, studying, cooking, and sleeping. Not a bad way to wind down the semester, I would say. The last night we took a train into Nimes, where we all went out to a nice dinner at a Thai restaurant, walking down past the amphitheater which dominated the city scape, and had a last hurrah of sorts that night before we all left the next day. It was a weird feeling, knowing that the following morning we would not be loading a big tour bus to head out together, and that day one of us, Alan, had slipped out without any of us knowing. All we could talk about was what we were going to do next, and we looked around at our new found friends, our only companions for the past few months, and said our goodbyes. It was pretty sad, actually, but I think at the same time we were all relieved to finally be getting away from the regimented schedule of the classics trip and be in control of our own lives again.

The next morning, I woke up fairly early, had breakfast, and headed down to the lobby to watch those who were leaving for the 9:30 train to Paris shuffle down, in various states of awakeness and sobriety. Some of us had already left on the 7 and 8:00 trains, including Stewart, my computer buddy, and Ambrice, Katie and Jess Eisenberg. I was set out to leave on the 1:00 train—I had originally wanted to buy a ticket for a train that would take me directly to Charles De Gaulle airport, but when I went to reserve my ticket I discovered that they were all sold out, and so myself and Anne and Jess Bradshaw decided to take the train to Paris Gare de Lyon, where I would board a metro out to the airport. It was a longer process, but it was the best I could do, and I had to board the flight, otherwise I would miss meeting my sister in Athens.

So, we said our goodbyes, and were left with Jarrett, Sam, Chris Vincoli, Jess Dwyer, and Anne and Jess Bradshaw. We checked out of the hotel, left our bags, and sat for a while, checking internet and finalizing travel plans, until it was close to lunch time. Then we had our second final hurrah—venturing to a part of Nimes I had not seen before, full of shops and botiques and best of all a great little Lebanese food place. We all got a few big dishes and ate family style—falafel, chicken, salad, hummas and all of those wonderful foreign foods that I have only had a few times previously but am so excited about eating in the fall. Then, the boys walked Jess, Anne and I to the train station and saw us off—we gave each other hugs and promises of email and such, and the train pulled out and we were off.

Jess, Anne and I spent a good deal of the ride talking about the trip in general, and one thing we all definitely agreed upon: despite its shortcomings, we have seen more of the world than we were likely to the rest of our lives, and we were so grateful to have seen it all. On the other hand, we were all positively sick of being told when to wake up and where to go every day, and we were feeling pretty claustrophobic from being stuck with the same group of 20 people for the past four months. It was kind of like being on a show like Survivor, except that the Island always moves and no one leaves, except for the tour guides. I was so excited to see my sister that I could barely think about the fact that these, my only companions, would be scattered to the wind. I hope I get to see a lot of my close friends in the fall, but we will be back at Davidson and into our own routines, and it will be much more difficult than just walking next door to the other hotel room. Or picnicking on someone’s porch.

We arrived in Paris right on time, and stepped out into an incredibly noisy and busy station. Luckily, both Anne and Jess spoke French, and they helped me find the right metro to get on to reach the airport. And they sent me off, and I was finally alone. I had to navigate the rest of the trip by myself, looking at the signs and maps as I went, worried that I would miss my flight or that I would never be able to find the gate. Luckily, neither of those two disaster scenarios came to pass. My flight went very smoothly, and I arrived late into Athens, hailed a taxi, and finally got to see my sister.

More Florence

May 5, 2007

Florence, Italy

The past two days have been another few wonderful ones in the city of Florence. I have done a lot of walking around, and seeing the city—this place is filled to the brim with all kinds of art and architecture, and I loved wandering around and seeing the sights. I could definitely come back here, if I had the time. Yesterday we got to see one of the most famous works in all of art history, Michelangelo’s David, and later got to see an exhibition of Cezanne and other impressionists working in Florence, and then the Brancacci chapel, with the famous Massaccio frescoes. Today was just as good—a trip to the top of the Duomo, and then a 2 hour tour around the Uffizi gallery, followed by the best dinner ever. The trip is finally winding down, and I love the opportunity to see anything other than the classical period.

But, as a last hurrah, we went to the archaeological museum in Florence, a vast building of neoclassical type with a new addition in glass and steel added in, and elsewhere, tall rooms filled with classical statuary and one of the most famous vases in the Greek world: the Francois vase, famous for the multitude of scenes and complexity of its iconography. It also had one of the largest collections of Egyptian art, something that we have not really seen much of for the past few months, but I was delighted to experience again. I put my iPod on and wandered through the galleries—stopping and looking at the objects I found interesting—one sign in particular outlined the influence of Egyptian architecture on the rest of the world and I was pleased and surprised to discover that we had visited almost all of them. The Great Pyramid, the pyramid of Cestius, the obelisks erected by Thuthmose III and the one in Istanbul, and another smaller pyramid on a local grave marker were all places that I now had in my personal photo album. I got Sam and we both stopped and stared. It’s a huge testament to how far we have traveled on this trip, to be able to look in a museum at the dissemination of an ancient culture and to be able to say that we have visited all of those places. We walked into room after room filled with pottery shards, by now able to easily identify what type and time period, and places filled with bronze statues of boys, busts of heads, and a curious mythological beast with a lion’s body, the tail of a snake, and a head of a goat sticking out of the middle of its back.

Then, it was on to the big event of the day, a visit to the academy, a small but very important museum that held Michelangelo’s David. After walking through what looked like some very high tech airport-type security, we were allowed to enter the museum. The front rooms just contained some minor pieces, and as we moved along we encountered some other lovely works—the Prisoners that Michelangelo had originally carved to go with a larger tomb dedication to one of the Medicis, I think, but was left unfinished in his studio. There are four of them—over lifesize bodies just beginning to pulsate with life, emerging out of the rock face, heads and limbs still enveloped but twisting and turning, trying to get free. Michelangelo is quoted with saying something along the lines of “the sculpture is already in the stone, it is my job to free it,” and here we saw exactly what he meant. I also enjoyed the opportunity, much like when I saw the unfinished work by Da Vinci in the Vatican museum, to see the process of the artist. Michelangelo clearly looked like he worked from the torso outward, creating the major thrust of the bodies’ core before moving outward to the limbs and the head, which still remained encased in their stony holds. And then rounding the corner, I saw him, the David, standing in his own niche, lit from a strong overhead light.

He was absolutely magnificent, larger than life and far more beautiful than I had imagined. I walked closer and all around the outside, admiring Michelangelo’s ability to perfectly capture the body, down to the veins that snaked their way around his free hand, which fell in a powerful curve againt his thigh. The other hand rose up to cradle the sling, which trailed down his back and came to rest in the curved hand. He looked off into the distance, a more contemplative figure, made even more significant by the complete lack of a goliath head, which had been the standard for the other figures created by Donatello and others. We all were in a state of shock. Chris Beeston and Ambrice immediately set down to sketch him, but I stayed up, walking slowly around him over and over again, before moving on to see some more of the gallery, which contained some large Renaissance paintings by De Sarto, who I am beginning to see everywhere, and others like Bronzino.

But the David was the true tour de force, and we could not help but be drawn back to him, turning and moving around him in slow circles.

After exiting the museum, Ambrice, Jess Bradshaw and I decided to walk over to another art exhibit we had seen advertised all over billboards in Florence. It was called Cezanne a Firenze, and it was an exhibition containing the works of Cezanne and a number of other impressionists including Mary Cassatt, John Singer Sargeant, and a few other Italian sounding artists who I had not heard of. I really enjoyed the change of scenery, walking around and watching Cezannes development as an artist, how the changes in location and in the surrounding people in his life affected his work. We took our time, walking through the rather modern looking Palazzo Strozzi, where the exhibition was housed, which looked like many of the other buildings in a neoclassical style, but inside was completely white walled and lit from above by acerbic looking florescent lights on their tracks.

It was so different—a step away from the studied realism of the Renaissance, the overblown color and drapery and figures of the Baroque, away from the faded frescoes of the Roman period, and into a world where the women sat in drawing rooms and played pianos, and where the men wore top hats and smoked cigars all day. The shapes were not outlined, but blocked in flowing movements of color—light and color, dancing on the picture plane. I know very little about this period in art history myself, and reading the plaques on the walls next to the paintings gave me only a little bit of a taste for what was going on during the impressionist movement. I wanted to know more, but for now I settled with looking and absorbing the art before me.

Jess Bradshaw elected to return to the hotel after the end of the exhibition, but I had talked to Toumazou earlier that day for suggestions as to what to see in Florence, and he had strongly recommended that we go to the Brancacci chapel to see the famous frescoes by Massaccio of the stories of St Peter. So Ambrice and I, in spite of the rain, ventured out of the museum and across the Ponte Vecchio. We ambled along the river, crowded with its warren of warm colored houses with their red tiled roofs, and made our way along the streets until we reached the bridge. The Ponte Vecchio is filled with shops—it looks more like a regular street than anything else, except at breaks in the building we could look over the railings and see the river Arno stretching in either direction beside us. It was really cool.

Crossing over to the other side of the river, we entered an area with tons of crowded streets, the houses projecting out over the road to crowd the sky above, and provide us with a little bit of shelter from the drizzle that seemed never-ending. We walked and walked, moving farther away from the river as we went, until we came to a small square with a rather rudimentary looking church—rough brick faced and small, barely rising out of the small buildings that surrounded it. But, to the side, we saw the sign for the chapel itself—the Brancacci chapel. We entered and realized that, like many of the churches in Florence, we had to pay a small fee to enter the building. Since neither of us had any cash, and like many of the places in Europe, this place did not accept a credit card, we asked for directions to the nearest bank and ventured out again into the grey drizzle.

The streets were not conducive to finding a bank. We had to stop at almost every intersection and ask again where we could find a banca and every Florentine would cock his head quizzically at us before vaguely pointing us in the right direction. It took us about 30 minutes, but eventually we found it, withdrew our money, and wound our way back through the narrow streets again to reach the chapel.

It was worth it. We entered the sanctuary through a small door that led to a colonnaded courtyard, arches of grey stone parading around in a small square. Then we moved into a side building and entered the church itself. The rest of the church stood, dimly lit by the natural light of the stormy day, with baroque looking volutes and decoration soaring up to the ceilings, which contained frescoes of illusionistic architecture and flying cherubims. But behind us, on the wall that we had just entered through, was the object of our journey—brightly lit, the frescoes adorned the walls of a small chapel, winding their story around. We stepped closer to examine them carefully, and then stepped back to grasp the whole scene—the edges of the fresco contained the famous scenes of the expulsion of the garden, gestures and poses that would later be copied by another Florentine artist, Michelangelo.

Adam and Eve occupy a small space in the entrance of the chapel, but they are no less powerful. An angel in a brightly colored cloak follows the shout lines of an angry God, driving the pair out of the garden of Eden. Adam hunches over, his back in a sad curve, and buries his face in his hands, ashamed, while Eden covers herself with her hands and uplifts her face in desperation and shame. I stood there, unbelieving, and Ambrice immediately whipped out her sketchbook to record the great works before us. I did a slow turn, and examined the other scenes one by one, and saw how the colors were still fairly bright after so many years, the folds of the cloth were beginning to take volume, and the artist was grappling with perspective. I could see the lines where the freco secco had been opened for work—small portions for the complicated details of the human face, and larger ones where the body and clothes were located. One of my most favorite scenes, and one that I had not seen in my art history books, was one showing a scene of baptism. Figures knelt in positions of supplication as the water was poured over their heads, a delicate moment and one excecuted, once again, with magnificent skill.

Ambrice and I spent a good hour there, walking around, drawing, and looking at the wonderful piece of art work before us, but we were starting to get hungry. So, we left the chapel and on the way out caught a short movie telling us the history of the chapel and the church itself, the frescoes of Massaccio had miraculously survived a horrendous fire, one which consumed much of the rest of the church. And then, we tramped off into the darkening evening, trying to keep our feet out of the puddles.

Dinner that night was another picinic, taken on Sam’s room with its nice balcony, and we all hung out and drank some wine afterwards. Everyone is really ready to be done with all of the traveling, and folks are starting to speak of home so often. I personally am ready to be in control of my life again—being told when to wake up and where to go every day gets so tedious.

Today was another wonderful day in the city. I finally got to go inside the Duomo, and we went to another great museum—the Uffizi gallery, home to some of Bottecelli’s great works, and had a magnificent dinner. Not a bad way to end the stay in Italy.

The morning started off early, even though we were not meeting as a group until much later in the day. The Uffizi gallery is such a prominent feature in Florence that to get into the museum reservations have to be bought in adavance, and at a very high price. Toumazou had made reservations as late as possible, and we were squeezed into the latest time of the day. Still, I was grateful to go, and I wanted to see as much as possible of Florence before I had to leave. The city is too beautiful to waste the morning sleeping in.

So, Ambrice and I decided to wake up early, and go to see the Duomo, and also possibly to go to another art gallery I had identified in the city. Across the Arno, the Pittu palace held a large private collection acquired by another one of Florence’s huge wealthy merchant families. They had two Caravaggios in their collection, and a number of works by Titian that I wanted to see. I also had to go to the leather market—the jacket I had bought a few days ago had a snap break, and I wanted it fixed before I left the city.

So, after having a little breakfast and a large amount of coffee to jumpstart the day, we were off, into the just-barely-awake city. We arrived at the market just as the vendors were opening up and uncovering the stalls, and I luckily recognized the same man who had so painstakingly fitted my jacket. He remembered me, luckily, and when I told him about the problems with my jacket he immediately offered to fix it for me that day, free of charge. I gave him the jacket and he promised it would be ready by noon.

So Ambrice and I made the short walk over to the Piazza del Duomo, arriving before any of the tourists had shown up. The doors of the church itself weren’t even open yet, but deciding that going to the top of the Duomo was a must-do, we decided to camp outside the doors and wait. A few minutes later Angela and Catherine, two other girls from the trip, just randomly walked up to the doors—they had the same idea we did, and wanted to get as early a start on the day as possible. As it turned out, the four of us were some of the first ones to get inside the building when it opened 40 minutes later.

I stepped inside, and was immediately awed and overwhelmed at how TALL the building seemed. The inside was a stark contrast to the marble encrusted and heavily sculptured outside; almost bare walls of grey stone rode the arched vaulting all of the way up to the roof, pitched and crisscrossed with the ribs of stone. There were virtually no horizontal lines in the whole interior—everything was concentrated in one great big thrust upward, meeting high overhead and making all of us feel remarkably insignificant. The wall over the entranceway contained a gigantic clock, designed by a Renaissance artist, with huge gold roman numerals aligned around a massive dial, decorated with frescoes in the frame. The windows were filled with stained glass, and echoed the upward movement of the rest of the structure—narrow oceans of light filled with color. I got such a tranquil, calm awe out of the whole experience of the building—the austerity of the walls and the soaring height, broken by splashes of glowing color—it was all so beautiful I could have stayed in there all afternoon.

We wandered around the echoing cavernous space, watching as the prayer stands got filled with candles and made islands of warm glow in the cool light that filtered down. We moved underneath where the dome rose to its great height, and saw the rings of fantastic demons and flights of angels that made up the enormous fresco on the inside of the dome. It was like stepping from silence into a great opera, as the figures twisted and soared inside of the massive space, and we stood flabbergasted at the whole thing.

It was then that we ran into some other CSAers, Scott and Jess Bradshaw came up to us as we gawked at the ceiling, and told us that they were going to go to the top. This building also apparently had an internal stair between the two shells of the dome, as St Peters did, and the view of Florence was supposed to be spectacular. So Ambrice and I began the steep ascent, climbing literally about 500 stairs that wound up and up, first clockwise, then counterclockwise, growing smaller and smaller the closer that we got to the top.

The first rest we got from the endless twisting was coming out of the narrow passage and into the inside of the church, right at the rim of the dome. From there, we were within a hand’s distance of the huge frescoes that adorned the ceiling, on a tiny little walkway wide enough for one person to pass at a time. Seen from up close, the frescoes were even more impressive—broad swaths of light and dark color that from across the gaping space blended to create the shadows on muscle, or the flurry of an angel’s wings. Ambrice immediately set down to sketch a bit, and I stopped and stared, letting my eyes wander over the incredibly complicated scene. Everywhere I looked I saw something different, and could return to the same spot over and over again and continue to be fascinated. I looked over at Ambrice, and she was busily sketching away, perched in a corner of the 8 sided dome, where people could more easily pass—and right next to her was a young guy who looked like he was about to do the same. He stopped and reached into his backpack, and pulled out a book, and started to thumb through the pages. I expected to see something similar to what Ambrice does—lots of figural studies, but was pleased to see what looked like architectural drawings. The thin straight lines and the use of multiple perspectives played themselves out in page after page, and I couldn’t help but stare at the kid’s work. He caught me looking, and I smiled awkwardly before bolting to the far end of the dome.

Eventually, however, I caught up with him, in his little corner, and worked up the courage to ask if he was an architecture student. It turned out that he was, just finishing up a semester with Syracuse University’s program based in Florence, a program I had actually looked into entering as a back up for the classics trip. His name was Zach, and this was his last day—he wanted to get some good drawings of the Duomo before meeting his parents and taking them on a tour. I even got a chance to look at his stuff up close, and gushed about how wonderful it was to be doing architecture in Florence. He agreed. After a few more minutes of small talk, Ambrice approached us, introduced herself, and we continued our ascent, waving goodbye to our newmade friend.

Eventually the stairs got so tight that they wound up in a perfect spiral, the bannester was unnecessary, replaced instead with a thick rope that hung down from the ceiling that we clung to for dear life as we wound around and around. And then, suddenly, we emerged out into the gray day, all of the little red roofs of Florence stretched below us.

Its not until you see the city from that perspective that you realize just how small it really is. From the perch, I could see the Arno, the Palazzo Pitti which I wanted to visit later in the day, Santa Croce, the church that I had visited with Scott, as well as the bright blue rounded dome of the synagogue. We walked around and around the lantern of the dome, crowded with the other tourists who babbled in a number of different languages all around us. We could even see down into the Piazza del Duomo itself, crowded with a multitude of umbrellas in the drizzle. I could see the markets, and the train station, and eventually we pulled out a map so that we could identify the other less identifiable stuff. It was amazing up there, the city of Florence just whirring underneath us in its tangle of streets and jagged red roofs, while we stood, above it all.

But, it was getting close to noon by then, and I still wanted to go to the other side of the Arno to see the Pitti Palace and gallery, so we began the narrow descent, reemerging on an upper level of the dome, where all of the frescoes still writhed, brightly illuminated. Since we still had a little time, Ambrice and I found a less trafficked area of the walkway and perched our sketchbooks on the rail, engrossing ourselves in Vasari’s fresco. Inspired by my architect encounter, I tried a few drawings of the inside of the building itself, and we talked and laughed as people passed us by and peered over our shoulders to see what we were up to.

And then it was a long descent, where the stairs finally spit us back out into the Piazza, and we made our way back to the markets to retrieve my jacket, good as new! We had a quick snack there, and knowing that we had to meet the professor and the rest of the group very shortly at Santa Croce, we quickly walked down, past the Duomo, and toward the river, crossing the bridge and moving straight back to an open plaza dominated by a huge palace. The day had finally cleared, and the clouds had retreated, leaving behind a clear blue sky filled with cotton-ball clouds. The palace had a lot more to it than I had thought—in addition to the galleries of Baroque and Renaissance art, there was a modern art gallery, the palace itself, evidently extravagantly decorated along the lines of the Medici, and elaborate gardens. Unfortunately, however, when we got to the ticket counter we discovered an outrageous admission price, and knowing that we would only have an hour before we would have to meet the group anyway, we decided to forego the gallery and walk along the river instead.

It was a lovely walk—the river was calm, and created imperfect reflections of the little buildings that lined the sides. Across the way, we could see the imposing walls of the Uffizi gallery rise up in their two grey wings of Baroque extravagance, and farther in the distance, the Duomo and the spires of our next destination—Santa Croce, where we would meet the group. We crossed at another of Florence’s charming bridges, this one uncluttered with shops and businesses, leaving open a clear view of the river, and the hills that rose in halcyon beauty as they met the clouds and the sky above, everything repeated again in the stillness of the water below. Two perfect worlds, with Ambrice and I enraptured in the middle.

Along the way, we passed a number of small pizzerias, and deciding that this was, after all, our last day in Florence, and that we should probably treat ourselves, we stopped in to have a lunch. We each split some white wine and had a delicious pesto pizza, basking in the sun and people watching as the Florentines went about their daily business. Then it was just a short walk to Santa Croce, which looked ten times more beautiful in the brilliant light of the afternoon than in the gloomy light of day in which Scott and I saw it. Since we still had some time, Ambrice and I busted out the sketchbooks again, rendering the façade of the building in pen and ink and oil pastels. The building looks like it is made out of the same materials as the Duomo—red, dark green, and white marble, set in panels that rise up the tripartite façade, punctured in the center by a dark rose window.

We stayed there until the group arrived, and we were given a short lecture on the church before we were freed to walk around inside. Since I had seen it before, I took my time with the inside of the church, going in all of the little chapels that stood next to the altar. One of them had a damaged fresco by a very early Renaissance artist—I am blanking on the name—that I had missed the first time around and wanted to go find again. I had also missed, in the next door cloister, a chapel designed by Brunelleschi, which I made sure to visit, and an exhibition of a bunch of gravestones, carved and inscribed with images of knights, and saints, the script growing spidery and firm as the carving techniques changed throughout time.

But we had our appointment to keep at the Uffizi, so it wasn’t long before we were ushered out of the church, and walked pell-mell through the twisty streets. We finally stopped at a grand Piazza that Ambrice and I had walked through on the previous day. It was full of statues, placed in three rows under a colonnaded gallery. These statues ranged in date from the antique to the Renaissance—a huge copy of David stood, imposing, flanking the doorway, and others surrounded him. One of them had a sculpture of the Rape of the Sabine women, two figures involved in an intense struggle over control of the female who cries from the top of the pile.

The Uffizi Gallery was a wonderful museum, and so popular that even with a reservation, we had to wait in a long line just to enter the place. But it was worth it. Not only were the long halls filled to the brim with wonderful original Greek and Roman sculpture, but the walls were filled with tons of renaissance works. The most famous of these is the Primavera and the Birth of Venus by Botteccelli. They were in a whole room filled with his works—his fine line and glowing figures lined the walls from floor to ceiling, and the whole group of us walked around the room, completely lost in the splendor. I even did some drawings—difficult because of the press of people around and the knowledge that the gallery would be closing soon, but I tried to take as long as I could to stop and appreciate what was before me every time.

Right when the gallery was about to close, I walked down the stairs and ran into an old friend—located right on the way out, in the floor below, Caravaggio’s Medusa grimaced. I had known that she was in the gallery from searching a bit the day before online, but I had figured that I had missed her in the multitude of masterpieces adorning the walls. But there she was, painted right on a round piece of wood that resembled a sort of shield, staring in her death mask. I stood and stared for as long as I could, and then saw other Caravaggios—and Caravaggio admirers such as Artemesia Gentileschi along the walls. Some of them showed dramatic scenes from bible stories—one in particular showed the beheading of Holofernes (Not sure if that’s spelled correctly), in which Judith takes a huge knife to the man’s neck, who lies screaming, his head staring right out at us.

Just as I was getting absorbed, the bell rang, indicating the closing of the museum, and I tore myself away from the wonderful pieces of art before me and walked down the stairs and out into the gradually dimming Florentine evening. I finally realized that I was hungry, and met the rest of the group on the steps. We had discovered, through Jeanna, a wonderful restaurant close by that served seven or eight all-you-can-eat traditional Italian food, and for our last hurrah we were going to go there. The reservation was for 7:30, so we waited a little bit, clutching our stomachs as they growled for food, and then walked to the restaurant where we joined the crowd at the door waiting for the restaurant to open.

The food was delicious, course after course of great steaming hot food. We started out with some lighter appetizers; priscutto and a wonderful barley and vegetable salad, similar to couscous, and salad. Then we got soup, and an option of several different kinds of delicious pasta, followed by the main event—huge plates of roasted meats of all different types. We ate so much food, and the wine was flowing freely. Everyone was really happy—we knew the trip was winding down, and we were all looking forward to home (or in my case being on our own). We found our way back to the hotel, past the Duomo, which loomed big out of the darkness, and through the dark maze of streets, passing out in our beds.

All that was left to do was to go to France, and the trip would be over.

Florence!

May 3, 2007

Florence, Italy

Two days ago was completely occupied with travel, so I will spare the details and begin with dinner, which was the best part of the day. We arrived in Florence in the late afternoon, and after walking through streets crowded with shops and leather spilling out into the streets, and the narrow buildings with rich smells of cooking perfuming the air. We dragged our bags over the rough cobblestones, arriving at a small but quaint looking hotel where we promptly checked in and rested from our breakneck tour of Tunisia.

That night, we all went out to dinner to celebrate Ambrice’s birthday, to a restaurant named Zaza that Jeanna, who had been to Florence pretty recently and had identified cheap but delicious restaurants in the area. It was only about a five-minute walk from the hotel, in a small piazza on the backside of the many churches that dot the area. The restaurant was crowded and full of yellow light, which spilled over the tabletops and onto the menus, laminated and placed with gusto in a number of languages. Katie and I split a salad and a main course, and we ordered a bottle of Chianti and talked and talked. Ambrice was glowing, and the food was excellent, and we all walked back to the hotel in the best of spirits. Then, after that, Jeanna took us to a wonderful gelateria just off of the square of the duomo, that had the best green apple gelato with bits of real apple embedded in it. The coffee gelato, which I have not tried, has ground up imported coffee beans from Colombia. This guy meant business, and the business was great. The gelato was positively delightful, the trip was winding down, we were in Florence, and life was good.

I returned to the hotel and watched some more Grey’s Anatomy with Stewart and Scott, mulling over a glass of wine and lounging in front of our laptops. The episodes were great, and we were all really excited for the next day. It was an off day, and I wanted to see as much of the rest of Florence as possible before heading out on the guided tour, which I am, to be perfectly honest, beginning to be totally sick of. At the end of the night, Scott asked me if I wanted to go try to find some churches with him. I was delighted to go, and told him I would meet him at 9 am the next morning: sleeping in for this trip.

And that was the end of the night! It was so relaxing, and I woke up the next morning feeling almost completely refreshed, happy to get ready in my own time and to mosey on down to the hotel breakfast—the best we have had in Italy, complete with a granola-type cereal and home made cappuccinos. I have discovered in Italy that I really like them, and whenever they make coffee here, which the Italians do very well, I have been helping myself out to some. It’s probably too expensive a habit to continue in the US, where I do not have access to espresso or a cappuccino maker. But its good to indulge a bit, especially when it is free like it is here at the hotel.

But we got going, right around 9:30, and walked out of the hotel into the Florentine morning, heading northeast from our hotel up to a beautiful church that Scott had remembered from his last stay in Florence. Called the Church of San Marco, the outside was decorated with baroque type scrolls at the edges and an elaborate monochromatic façade, complete with wreaths and arches, and elaborate windows with deep cornices projecting forward from the stone face of the building. We stepped inside, into the three aisled basilica, but were disappointed to see that the inside was almost completely occupied with scaffolding; the church was undergoing some restoration, and the metal crossbars filled most of the available space all of the way up to the rafters. Still, we wandered up and down the aisles of the church, looking at massive paintings hung in the niches still visible on the walls. Most of them were massive opulent works, swarms of angles and saints riding the air currents up to heaven. The altar was still visible too, dark stone wood carved in spirals of florals, the base filled with colored panels too small to see from our far off vantage point. We walked down the side aisles, and just before we exited the church Scott ran into a priest, who was collecting donations to help with the church reconstruction.

The priest asked Scott if he knew any Italian, and Scott replied that no, he knew some German, so the priest settled with asking Scott questions in Italian and Scott answering in German. The priest found out that we were students from the United States, and that we were only in Florence for a short time, and then the priest gestured to me and very clearly said “bambino?” Apparently he though that Scott and I were married and I was pregnant! Scott turned bright red and said no, and we left the church as quickly as possible to laugh about the whole thing in the light of the morning. How strange!

Gesturing to my new “husband”, we set off down the street again, heading in the direction of a set of bright blue domes off in the distance that looked interesting. But on the way we spotted a side street with a colonnaded courtyard surrounding it and what looked like another good church to visit to we made a detour, walking into a rather austere looking square with tall arches resting on slender pillars. It turns out that we were in the Piazza SS Annunziata, and then out of nowhere someone was calling Scott’s name, and a friend that he had mentioned would be in Florence studying abroad was striding toward us. His name was Jason, and he was waiting for his class to start, a moving lecture done by the personal art advisor to the Vatican about the high Renaissance in Italy. We talked for a bit, and as the class time drew near he invited us to listen in on the lecture, saying that the professor would probably not even notice our presence anyway. So we did, entering the outer courtyard of the church complex and looking at the faded murals that covered the interior walls, frescoes done by a Florentine Renaissance painter named Andrea de Sarto, a painter known for his perfect renderings.

The professor talked about Rome’s influence on the Renaissance in Florence, talking specifically about Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling and the massive languishing hand, which perfectly fit the muscular, twisting bodies of his Adam, but seemed a little bit out of place in the slenderer figures on de Sarto’s walls. De Sarto, I read that night, was originally a tailor, and although the fabric on his figures did not have the opulent crisp quality of the Michelangelos and the later mannerist Pontormos, the sweep of cloth around the figures did make up for the slenderness, amplifying the figures just enough to make the hand blend with the body. Fascinating. I wish we had lectures about the Renaissance from the personal advisor to the Pope. Or I guess I could just take the course when it is offered at Davidson. There is never enough time to learn all I want to learn….

We stayed for a while, listening to one lecture on the fresco, before Jason turned to us and told us that he forgot to mention that the class was actually three hours long, and as much as I was enthralled in the lecture, I knew I would certainly get my fill in the days to come, and there was more of Florence to see. So we left, continuing out toward that enigmatic blue dome off in the distance.

It turned out the blue dome was the Synagogue, the largest in Florence, constructed in a composite of Moorish, Byzantine, and Romanesque elements, resulting in a building with a Greek type of cross-in-square plan decorated with interlaced geometric and floral motifs, reminiscent of a mosque, with lacy high arched vaults and bulging pointed arches along the upper clerestory. We walked in first to the museum, a testament to the glory and the suffering of the Jews under the short-lived Italian monarchy, and then later under the rule of Mussolini. The exhibition showed photographs, marriage documents, and building plans, all displaying a multitude of influences ranging from the highly baroque scrolls and volutes to the many pointed stars and hexagons that would more easily fit in the Islamic tradition. It was an interesting amalgam of cultural signs, and we spent a while wandering though the museum, before being arrested on the second floor by a window that opened onto the Synagogue itself—a view that privileged a view almost as great as that from the top of the Dome of St Peters, from which the plan of the Synagogue could be easily discerned.

And then, we descended to return to the church itself, walking into the almond brown splendor of the synagogue, spreading in two axes away from a central dome that rose in a shrinking series of paisley type patterns all of the way to where the circles met at the top. Looking around, opposite the entrance was a large wood and gilded structure that I guessed was analogous to the altarpiece, giving the whole complex a focal point, and the dark wood benches radiated out from the space under the dome, ringing the interior and filled with tittering Italian schoolchildren, all attired, as Scott was, with the required yamakah. We sat and looked, and turned our heads around, and looked some more, taking in the intricate designs that covered the inside—I was impressed with the similarities in decoration between the synagogue and the mosques and the churches we had seen, especially where the dome came down and met the spandrels—the space filled with a medallion of angels in the Christian churches, and where the non-representational reigned here and in the Muslim tradition, the medallions were filled with text—either the flowing curvilinear script of Arabic, or the knife-edged blocks of the Hebrew.

We wandered around a bit and then wandered out the side door of the synagogue, stopping to contemplate the outside, which was just as impressive as the interior, the dome rising up in a steep curve, the outsides faced in brown and off white stone laid in rows that alternated between the colors. The gardens were in the midst of some reconstruction work, but I could tell that they must have been well manicured and sculpted to go with the elaborate exterior.

Then we went along toward the river, finally ending up at the church of Santa Croce, a gothic church that contains tombs of some of the most famous movers and shakers in the Renaissance world—Galileo, Michelangelo, and Machiavelli. The church itself was sumptuous from the outside, echoing the exterior of the Duomo—blocks creamy marble, framed by dark bands of green or a burnt orange, rising up in a tripartite series of pointed arches, the central arch balancing on its top a massive rose window that made a dark hole in the edifice before the roof continued up in a shallow pitch, eschewing the volutes and cornices of the baroque.

The interior was glad in a grey stone, the arches of the aisles rising up to high points, and to a piece of triangular quilt work in a magnificent groin vault overhead. The walls, where they were not simply grayed, were decorated with all kinds of plaques and inscriptions. Close to the altar of the church we found a bust of Galileo inset into the wall, and excitedly pointed and took pictures, the but framed in its own architectural niche, trying to distinguish itself from all of the others around it. On the opposite side, across from the Galileo monument, was a painted and sculptured niche dedicated to Michelangelo, with his coffin placed on an elevated pedestal and surrounded by three sculptures of women. Produced by Giorgio Vasari, the same person who wrote the famous Lives of the Artists, it worked its way up the wall of the church in the same way as the façade of a baroque exterior—tapering levels framed by volute scrolls and at the very top held by painted curtains swung about by cherubs on little stubby wings. And then farther up that side, an effigy to Dante, groups of sculptures placed in a similar fashion as Michelangelo’s tomb, but missing the brightly colored painting. Scott stood and stared with his mouth hanging open, so excited that we had come inside the church.

And we continued on, stopping to stare again at the tomb of Machiavelli, and farther to the transept of the church where a series of frescoes were decorated in what looked like a very early Renaissance style, that I would find out later was painted by Giotto. On the side of the church was a doorway leading out to a cloister, with arrows pointing to a small chapel designed by Brunelleschi, which we stopped in briefly. It was much simpler than the rest of the church, left bare of effigies and ornament, but supposedly one of the best proportioned interior spaces in the Renaissance—a rectangle with a recessed niche across from the door to hold the statue, leading up to a ribbed dome that met overhead, all of it done in shades of grey except on the spandrels where the transition had been marked by ceramic roundels. And then on, to a rather large art gallery set into the old cells of the cloister, with art work ranging from the early Christian and medieval period all of the way past the Renaissance. The most famous work was a now-damaged cross by Cimabue, which hung in a grand room full of tall paintings and frescoes.

We perused for quite a while, and then made our way back to the Duomo, where we had agreed to meet Jason for lunch. We stood huddled under the arches of the cathedral as the skies opened up and it started to drizzle—a grey cold rain that soaked through our light jackets and straight to the skin. Every few minutes an umbrella-seller would approach us and ask if we wanted to buy one, but we stubbornly replied no, hugged ourselves tighter, and waited for the approach of Scott’s friend.

He appeared out of the grey drizzle and escorted us to the Mercado Centrale—a huge space that looked a lot like a train station but was filled with all kinds of shops ranging from butcher shops to cheese places, to wine booths. Although it specialized in food that would need to be cooked, the corners of the huge place contained a lively little sandwich shops with waiters that buzzed around and cheerfully plopped down laminated menus while simultaneously asking for drink orders. We each had some paninis, and sat and talked for the better part of the afternoon. It turns out that Jason had a very unusual major, one dealing with Artificial Intelligence and creativity, a major unique to Stanford and one that I thought would only be possible in the Silicon Valley area. It sounded really cool though, and it dealt with all kinds of symbolic systems—the reason he was in Florence, in fact, was that he pitched art as a symbolic system, an idea that I completely agree with, and came to study Renaissance art in its birth place. Best of all, thanks to Stanford’s humongous endowment, they were able to close down the Sistine chapel and get a private tour of that portion of the Vatican, which made my jaw drop. I would have been very happy to see that great ceiling out of the huge crowds of people that hogged the experience. But I guess that’s what going to a huge rich school will do for a person. It was so wonderful just to hear about someone else’s experiences abroad. I think Jason was slightly horrified to learn of our eating and internet habits—picnicking with grocery store goods, making our lunches from breakfast, and standing on street corners to get internet. He was living with a host mom and had a huge student center with constant access to the outside world.

I guess it’s a trade off—after all, he did not go to Tunisia, or see the pyramids, or the Parthenon. I think if I had another chance I would like to have an experience in cultural immersion—its something that is almost completely absent from this trip. I guess that’s for next time…

We finished the meal and Jason escorted us to the nearby San Lorenzo, a church built by Brunelleschi but left unfinished on the exterior, a rough pile of bricks that opens up to a rather austere but well ordered internal design. We walked into the tall space and were once more amazed at the majesty of the beautiful place—rounded arches coming up to meet a tall wood coffered ceiling. As we approached the altar, we noticed huge paintings placed in the niches formed by the columns, and the elaborate altar made of carved wood and inlaid with bits of color. The church complex itself was huge—doors on each side of the short end of the crossed plan of the church led to smaller sacristies, one of which was also designed by Brunelleschi and painted by Donatello—another austere but well proportioned piece, with four walls meeting a dome that rose even higher, meeting in a set of arches near the top. We knew that Jason had mentioned more to the church, however, saying something about a chapel elaborately decorated with frescoes and marble, which, judging by the relatively bare interior of this one, was not the same thing.

So we exited the church and walked around the outside to the apsidal area, passing through booths of leather shops that dotted the streets all around this area, calling out to us and displaying their racks of pungent goods. It was all beautiful, but I knew that asking Scott to stop to shop was not the smartest thing, so we continued, rounding the outside and coming to another rather plain looking building with a small sign on the outside denoting the Medici Chapel.

Stunned at the entrance fee (a whopping 6 euro), but determined to see the Michelangelos we had discovered were inside, we paid and got our tickets and walked through a low ceilinged bookshop to the chapel itself. Where we were absolutely and positively dumbfounded. The Medici chapel resembles the Pantheon by way of interior decoration—elaborate patterns of colored marble defining and expanding the tall space, filled in places with over-life-size bronze statues of people in flowing Renaissance garb, all of the way up to the painted dome, which rose in a series of bright winged figures over head, adding to the richness of the visual experience. Some of the walls were scaffolded, obviously in the middle of some sort of restoration, but even despite having some of the magnificence obscured, the building soared in an operatic expression of weath and power. I wondered: how on earth did this Medici family get so much money? Something to research for the summer…

Moving past the chapel itself, which was overwhelming enough, we got to a smaller and much more plain series of rooms decorated in some famous pieces of sculpture. These were the Dawn, Dusk, Day, Night statues carved by Michelaneglo, originally planned as part of a larger monument but left uncompleted. These massive sculptures sit in carved niches, reclining upon massive voluted curves, their twisting, sinuous bodies bulging in muscle, as they each embody a time of day. Only one looked completely finished to me, a female with musculature that could have been used to teach anatomy, her massive arms cradling her head as her legs prop up on their marble cushion. The others lounge in greater or lesser states of completion—bulging bodies with roughly chiseled heads, arms and legs still in the processes of detaching themselves from the rocks that bind them, all impressive in their massive strength and size.

By this time Scott and I were happy with our day, and in need of doing some homework, so we left the Medici chapel and walked the few blocks back to the hotel, stopping at a small grocery store to grab some essentials for the next few nights: tuna, salad, yogurt, and cereal. And then we were off, tramping through the dampened streets, in a high state of spirits. I came back to the hotel to do a little bit of work on the papers we have due at the end of the semester, and enjoyed a nice meal on the porch of one of the hotel rooms, where we managed to steal some good internet to check email.

I actually ended up staying on the porch for quite a while, talking with the groups of people that came and went, drinking a little bit of wine, discussing the trip and how close it was to being over, before I finally got too tired and headed off to bed.

Today was another great day; one of our last days of having an actual lecture while on the Classics Trip, and since none of it really dealt with classics at all, but the reflections of the classical world in the Renaissance, I was happy to follow the group and walk around and listen. The day started out pretty gray, but it never really started to rain so we were happy to explore the city some more. I am amazed at how walkable Florence is: it really still has the shape and dimensions that it did in the Renaissance, streets still curved, buildings closely set, and everything within twenty minutes of each other. Its absolutely wonderful. The first place that we visited today was a church called Santa Maria Novella, where we sat outside for a little while and listened to Katie as she gave a presentation on classical mythology in the Renaissance; how the myths and gods themselves were changed and sanitized to reinforce Christian values under the patronage of wealthy humanists. I found the lecture very interesting, and saw a book in the bookstore dealing with the subject that I want to pick up later (It is called Mirror of the Gods), and it turned out to be the major source for Katie’s report, which, judging by what she had to say, will be a great read.

After her lecture and a report by Dan on numismatics, or coinage, we stepped into the church itself. Santa Maria Novella is a gothic church with the typical tall colored marble façade, accented on the sides by scrolled curves and pointed arches everywhere accentuated by red and white blocks of color that I typically associate with Spanish architecture. It made me wonder if perhaps the motif indicated a Moorish influence, but I couldn’t be sure. Something to look out for in the future. This particular church is famous for its multitude of art. We entered the complex through a side door, and walked through a courtyard along the plain side of the church, before getting inside the building itself, where the piers soared up and spread out along the ceiling in a series of black and white hatched diamonds.

The inside of the church, most notably, contained one of the most important pieces of painting in the Renaissance—a simple painting of the trinity—Christ on the cross in the center, behind him god the father and on one side the Virgin Mary and the rest of the family group. However, the importance resides not in the crucifixion itself, but what it is situated within—a recessed corridor in a trompe l’oelil that renders the shape of the coffered arched vault above and the walls to the side in perfect one point perspective, all lines converging to a single vanishing point behind Christ’s head. Outside of the niche, the two donors of the painting are shown, perfect profile portraits, and below, on a level that looks to be in front of the niche, is a skeleton laid out on a bier. By many art historians, this is considered to be the grave of Adam, and the inscription above his bones reads “what you are, I once was; what I am, you will be,” a chilling reminder of the mortality of man, and his expulsion from the garden, while above the image of Christ offers hope.

To the sides of the church, a number of chapels opened up and complicated the space. One to the left of the altar, called the Strozzi chapel, contained a number of works by Andrea Orcagna, an artist famous for using extreme forshortening in an image of the dead Christ, these frescoes instead showed images from the Divine Comedy. In front of the works stood a many pointed gold altarpiece, painted with images of the Virgin, stiffly holding Christ in her outstretched arms. Moving out of that side of the church, we entered a lower ceilinged courtyard, accentuated by the shallow arches with the distinctive black and white banding and medallions on the ceiling. Scott was walking with me, and we were talking about the origins of humanism in the Renaissance, and I realized that although I knew some about the development of Renaissance ideas, art, and science, all stemming from a resurgence in interest in the classical world and their emphasis on careful observation of the world, I did not know why, suddenly, the Catholic church, who had for so long suppressed such things—outlawing dissection, for example, or criticizing realistic painting methods for being deceptive. There must have been a reason why this restriction was lifted… classical ruins had been around for a long time, and never had there been such an interest in them before. I thought perhaps economic developments, the rise of the merchants and the beginnings of mercantilism might offer an explanation, or the weakening of the Papacy—echoes of the residence of Avignon bounced around in my head, but I could not explain it. Why was there such a resurgence in art and science? Why did the conservativism get so shoved aside? Again, more to read and discover when I get home. Scott had a good question, and I want it answered.

Anyway, the walls underneath the arched hallways of the cloister were lined with a faint series of paintings, some stripped down to their black and white outlines, others clinging to bits of color, and still others with almost complete scenes. These were famous paintings too—stories of the flood done by an early renaissance painter named Paolo Ucello, whose frescoes, ironically enough, were damaged in 1966 by a flood, never to recover. I walked around here for a bit, and stopped and stared at an image I recognized—yellow buildings with a heavy use of foreshortening, bodies drifting in the water, rising. It was a painting I had studied in my art history class, and I blinked again to clear my amazement. These things pop up in such unexpected places. I always somehow expect to see them clearly marked in museums, not just run into on a wall in the middle of a church, but that’s where some of the most important ones are found. Curious.

Then on the side of the cloister was a small room jam-packed with images. Called the Spanish chapel, this little room contained scenes of the last judgment—pointy-eared demons poking the tortured souls in hell, and the elysian fields of paradise making a stark contrast. The images were so complex that the group of us just stood and turned for a few minutes, taking in the profusion before settling on the details.

And, just as quickly, we were out of the church and to the next destination, a return (at least for Scott and I) to San Lorenzo, that rough-edged building with a well ordered interior and the Medici chapel along the back side. We were released to wander in the building, and I was amazed at the number of things I noticed the second go-round that I had completely missed on the first. On one wall was a painting that looked markedly different than the others, a simple painting of a monk and a small child, but the background, instead of being a realistic and highly detailed interior of a building, or an arpeggio of clouds in a brightly lit sky—this one contained simple blocks of blended color, streaks of light and dark just enough to suggest buildings without delineating them. I looked closer, and the sign told me that in fact, this painting was executed by a modern artist by the name of Pietro Annigoni.

Right next to this was a huge oil painting by the mannerist artist called Bronzino, about which I know very little, but it showed St Lawrence being roasted over a set of coals. Chris Vincoli came up to us and told us a little anecdote about the saint. According to tradition the saint was about to be put on this spit to be martyred, and when his killers asked him if he had any last words, any need to renege on his commitment and give up his faith, he replied “turn me over so you can do the other side.” Wow.

Then I just revisited the church for a while, going back to that small side chapel by Brunelleschi, and back into the main part where the four arms of the cross met to rise up into a frescoed dome. And then I noticed something strange, to my eyes, about the building. Most domes come down into spandrels, which soften the transition to the vaulted ceiling and creates nice lines that moves the eye along. Here, the dome came down to the spandrels as usual, but the bottom edges of the spandrels, which connect to 2 arms of the church, respectively, did nothing but come down in an arch and meet the corner of the building, and the tops of them created what looked like an arched doorway against a flat roof. And then I looked into the smaller chapel and saw that this chapel was constructed identically, except where the arches of the spandrels came down, it did not open onto the side wings of the church, but came straight down to form the walls—nothing extended beyond the perimeter of the dome itself. It worked for the side sacristy, but on the big dome the arches met the ceiling only at the top point, providing a partition between the dome area, breaking up the smooth transition of space… and drawing me to another factor on the ceiling. The two shorter side aisles were segmented in the same way—no smooth transition of planes, but a simple row of barrel vaults laid side by side. The fact of the matter was the church had no groin vaults whatsoever! I was trying to figure out why it had looked so strange to me and this was it—highly unusual for a gothic church, and certainly part of the early staged in the cathedral’s development. It made me wonder when and why the change had occurred—Michelangelo definitely employed it. More things to research when I get home!

Outside of the church was another building that Toumazou recommended we see—the Laurentian library, with the famous set of curvy steps swelling down to spread across the floor, designed by Michelangelo himself. The walls were filled with niches and inset columns, spanning the upper length of the walls. Scott and I walked up the stairs and into the library itself, looking at the rows of stiff dark wood benches, inset with shelves for books and labeled in a browned spindly script. The ceilings were richly carved, and the whole thing had a hush of silence that would stifle the desire to whisper. We walked down the long aisle, ending up in a small exhibit of manuscripts from the library—woodcuts and hand painted designs featuring mythical creatures. They ranged immensely in date from old calligraphic manuscripts to typed and set woodblocks, and showed elaborate scrolled scenes that danced in the frames surrounding the pages—the books a special and very expensive commodity.

We returned to the hotel to have a brief lunch before heading out into the grey day in Florence, but we were on our way inside anyway. We went to see the Bapistery of San Giovanni—the small octagonal building that faces the duomo, covered with the famous bronze doors designed by Lorenzo Ghiberti in his famous competition with Brunelleschi. After a considerable wait outside the doors, we were allowed inside the building and were amazed at the gold mosaics that wound their way in a big circle up the inside of the roof of the octagonal structure. Near the altar was a massive Christ, his huge hands and feet spread, confronting us from where we stood, necks craned upwards, looking in amazement at the proliferation of images before us. We saw scenes from the last judgment—stilted figures being tortured, flights of angels standing in horizontal registers, separated from one another by florals that followed the curve of the ceiling. The walls and the colonnade on the second story were covered with marble, and the whole thing was so opulent it could not properly be absorbed—we looked as long as we could, but kept seeing more and more. Finally, overwhelmed, we left and continued to our final stop.

The last place we went was the Bargelio Museum, located a short walk away—a building full of Renaissance sculpture, including the David by Donatello, and the two bronze plaques submitted by Ghiberti and Brunelleschi to decide who would end up doing the bronze doors. The decision was originally so difficult that the committee in charge suggested the two work together, which was immediately rejected by the egotistical Brunelleschi. However, he did end up building the dome on the Duomo, so the loss can’t have hurt that bad. The sculptures in the museum are situated in a building constructed in 1255 as the original city hall, which was later converted into a prison and finally a museum. No hint of its morbid past (it was originally used for executions) exists today- the tall rooms are home to some lovely pieces. I put my iPod on and wandered through the halls, taking my time with each piece, walking around it and moving closer and backing up as I saw fit. The upper level contained a lovely sculpture of Mercury by Giambologna, a lithe figure balanced on one leg, and the lower floors contained some sculpture by Michelangelo, and a number of other great pieces.

Finally, completely ready to go and thoroughly overstimulated by all I had seen that day, I met up with Stewart and we decided to try our hands at the markets near San Lorenzo—I was in the market for some leather and she wanted to look for a linen skirt. So we wandered back, getting completely lost and going for 30 minutes in the wrong direction, finally ending up at the Duomo to find it closed to the public for entrance, and then getting some really great gelato as we walked to the markets. They were busy, as always, vendors beckoning us into their shops, and we took the bait, walking and looking at loads and loads of leather. I was finally talked into coming past the lines of small booths and into an actual leather shop, where the salesman took me and fitted me for jacket after jacket, pulling at the sleeves and zipping it to make sure it fit just so. I had seen a few that I liked, but wanted to keep looking, when a dark colored jacket with pockets at the chest and hip, a belt, and a high collar caught my eye. It looked almost like a fighter pilot jacket, and although it was not as simple as the others I had seen, I liked the worn look of the leather. But I wanted to keep looking, so I asked the price, got the business card, and moved in and about the stalls, trying on a few more, including one lovely long jacket that fell mid-thigh and had wide lapels. But it was too fancy for my tastes, and totally excited, I went back to the first place and got my bomber jacket. Its beautiful.

I came back to the hotel on a shopping high and went to the grocery store, grabbing some valuable and rare peanut butter and settling in for a tuna, yogurt, bread and peanut butter dinner, which ended up turning into long discussions, and lots of loud talking on the porch. Then one of the kids on the trip stumbled into the room, completely drunk, and demanded we leave. We did, and then he started talking to Ambrice in a completely disrespectful manner, and after a number of unpleasantries, during which he almost took a swing at Dan, he stumbled out into the Florentine night, leaving us to deal with the mess and the aftermath, Ambrice’s discomfort, and the general yuckiness that followed.

On a better note, Ambrice, Vincoli and Scott and I ended up retreating into Vincoli’s room where we had some great conversations about life and the trip and love while waiting for the whole business to blow over. I thouroughly enjoyed it. There is nothing better than getting to know your friends as well as you can over a little (not too much) wine and some really good talking. I definitely think it helped Ambrice’s mood, and I ended up going to bed pretty satisfied with the whole day. Florence is so much fun!

Adventures in Tunisia

April 30, 2007

Kairouan, Tunisia

The past few days have been fairly relaxing for the classics trip, we have seen a lot of things both ancient and modern, and gotten a good taste of what Tunisia is like. Tunisia is a lot greener than I expected, and blindingly beautiful. Everywhere you go there are flowers all in bloom, rolling green fields that roll their way up to steep craggy cliffs, and the air, at least not in the cities, is always perfumed with strange and exotic plants. Cactus and palm trees coexist with eucalyptus, and the food is wonderful—close in type to Turkish, but last night I had some of the best couscous I have ever had, and the bread is always fresh. The people are friendly too—although the language barrier—them speaking only Arabic and French, and us speaking English with a smattering of other languages. It makes buying anything difficult, especially when the currency (the dinar) is divided into units of 1000, not 100 like all of the other currency we have been using.

Two days ago we woke up from our hotel in Tunis and hit the road, headed toward a city called Keff, a good 4 hour drive that would be broken up here and there by stops along the way. We loaded our stuff onto the little tiny bus and bounced along the rough roads all of the way there, preventing me from doing any amount of work or from sleeping, something I had needed desperately ever since Rome had happened to me. But as it was, we were crammed like sardines in a little tiny tin can of a bus, moving from destination to destination.

The first stop of the day was Dougga, an important site in North Africa because of its good state of preservation and with good mosaics found in situ. The first place we came to was a theater, constructed all out of a grey stone rising out of the ground and overlooking a vast plain of gold colored flowers that waved away into the distance. The founding of the city dated all of the way back to the Punic era, but almost all traces of it are gone, hidden under the accretions of Roman construction and destruction. We moved on, walking down the terraced hillside toward a temple with a columned front porch, standing mostly complete against the bright blue sky. This was the Capitolium, or as our tour guide told us, the “capital” of the Roman city, and contained three niches within the cella, one for each of the gods of the Capitoline triad—Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva. The temple stands, surrounded by the broken down ruins of a paved courtyard, looking out over the beautiful terrain that stretched below as far as the eye could see, punctuated here and there by the crumbling bits of arches, struggling to assert themselves against the weight of time.

The day was bright and beautiful, and we walked around the site, scrambling over bits and pieces of rock, moving in and out of doorways that led to open rooms, up and down staircases that dead-ended into the sky, and enjoying the many wildflowers that flourished in and among the ruins. We walked along a narrow grass-filled path until we reached a small triumphal arch, sitting all alone in the middle of the olive trees that flourish in the area, and continued on, coming to a much larger complex of columns set in a giant semi-circle and left open to the sky. This was the temple of Caelestes, an African god adopted by the Romans and associated with the moon—thus explaining the unusual shape of the temple complex.

We did not spend much time lecturing in these places, only wandering around, absorbing the sites and looking around at the beautiful landscape that Tunisia presented to us. But before long, we were back on the bus again, crammed in the heat and the sweat and bouncing along the poorly constructed roads until we reached Bouleregia, another Roman site that is famous for its mosaics and its subterranean houses.

The houses are virtually invisible from ground level—the open air court typical of the Roman house is sunk into the ground, and provides the only form of light and air into the rest of the house which opened onto it below. The ground level was filled simply with the foot high remains of walls and the dried out husks of mosaics that looked out from their dusty beds at us. The most interesting part was going below ground, taking a steep set of stairs down to the basement, where the mosaics were almost fully complete—huge mosaics with very small tesserae replete with images of reclining goddesses, dancing dolphins and flying cherubims. We wet the mosaics with some of the water from our water bottles, and under the shining light from the courtyard they emerged, brilliant and slickly shining, the colors deeper and richer than they ever could have been in the dusty light of day, and we were stunned at how good they looked.

The last stop of the day was at a rock quarry, where some of the best marble in the Roman world came from, it was called Numidian Yellow, and grew out of the huge cliffs that rose up tall and jagged out of the rolling plains of Tunisia. They were positively spectacular, a rough reddish yellow brown, striped here and there with a bit of vegetation. Sam and some others climbed up to the top and stood from one of the outcroppings, staring down at us from the great height, before scrambling back down the slope to rejoin us and the bus. All of us were getting really tired, and we all just wanted to get to the hotel as fast as possible so that we could rest a little bit from the exhaustion of the constant travel. We did check into the hotel eventually, a small but fairly nice establishment that provided dinner, which of course, was the most important part.

The dinner ended up being fabulous! It was a good 4 courses, and we stuffed ourselves all of the way up to our chins. The first course was a salad tossed with some light vinegar dressing, followed by an egg-and-tuna mixture that kind of reminded others in our group of quiche, which I actually thought was the last course and ate with gusto. It turned out, however, that there was much more—a whole plate with a chicken breast cooked in what smelled like a little bit of curry, with vegetables and rice. And then, when we thought we had eaten more than our fill, the dessert course—a juicy orange—came out. It was delicious. We loved it all, and we had not eaten as a big group since Jess Dwyer’s big dinner in Rome. And then we retreated to our hotel, to watch some Grey’s Anatomy on our laptops, before turning in. It was going to be a long ride ahead of us the next day, and we were tired.

The next day we woke up early in preparation for the super long ride ahead of us, and loaded all of our stuff into the tiny bus and set off for our next destination. After a few hours in the bus, where we all got more than a little bit claustrophobic, emerging from the bus ready to go and see some of the beauties of Tunisia. We stopped at Maktar, an old Numidian site with tons of ruins scattered about in the middle of the rolling countryside.




Then it was on the bus again, for another few hours of insufferable bouncing before we arrived at Kairouan, which was one of the most important cities in Tunisia, because it was one of the three holy cities in all of Islam, second to Mecca. A huge mosque completely constructed out of the ruins of ancient Carthage decorated the city center, together with the remains of the Casbah, an ancient Arab fortress that was transformed into a hotel where we would spend the night. We stopped at the medina-- the arab shopping market-- to walk through on the way back to the hotel, walking past stall after stall of street vendors in their glitz and glitter of ornament, stalls of spices oozing scent after delicious scent into the hot dusty air.

And then we checked into the hotel, where we saw, to our surprise and delight, that it had a wonderful swimming pool and sumptuous open courtyards together with wide rooms with high ceilings, dark carved wood, and blue floral tiles. We stopped in just long enough to drop off our bags, before heading out into the noise and dust of the medina— we walked along rows after rows of all of the wonderful exotic items for sale. There, we stopped and bargained where we could, stopping to negotiate, and where our language skills failed, we settled with writing down number after number on little bits of paper, before finally deciding on a final price and walking away with our purchases—lovely scarves, some silver jewelry, and a hookah. Chris Vincoli and Stewart and I did most of our shopping together, and one of the shop keepers asked Chris if he were a lucky enough man to have “two beautiful flowers” with him, and we all giggled as he nodded yes. For the rest of the afternoon, we used him as our deflector against the attentions of all of the vendors, intrigued, perhaps, at our light hair and skin, and every time he protectively moved toward us, they would back away with a laugh and a smile. It was pretty funny— the differences in the social customs of these people and those at home, who did not intrude into your personal lives unless they knew you already. Here, the shopkeepers always wanted to know where you were from and how you knew each other, and I was very glad always to be in the company of others—tall light haired girls attract way too much attention around here.

But we did get exactly what we had wanted at the medina, in a short amount of time, and came out feeling that we had probably lost a little bit of money to our poor bargaining skills, but since the dinar is worth less than the dollar anyway, we wrote it off as we had to. We had bought what we had bought, there was no way to return it, and I was happy with my purchases.

We returned to the hotel, walking in the massive stone walls of the Casbah to the lobby of the hotel, richly decorated with carving all along the interior and low couches in brightly patterned sitting in the spacious rooms, lit from the back courtyard where the blue of the swimming pool beckoned. Stewart and I were rooming together, so we took one look at each other and ran upstairs and into our bathing suits. The water ended up being too cold to get in, but the whole group ended up sunning on the patio. Some of the boys opened up a pack of cigars and sat trying to act super grown up, as we lounged around. We all agreed: this was heaven, the first real break from all of the stress of travel, and knowing that the chateau in France was equipped with a pool made us all very happy.

Pretty soon the sun went down and we elected to return to our rooms, settling in for a short nap and a nice long hot shower before heading down to dinner. The dinner here was provided also, and we were greeted with a buffet filled to the brim with all kinds of really good Tunisian food—couscous and a tomato soup, lots of veggies for all kinds of salad, a beef and rice dish that I loved, and fresh fruit. We ate our hearts out, not stopping until our stomachs were bulging with fullness. After so many meals of tuna and carrots, it felt good to eat some real meat and real veggies, and the food was so unusual it was a delight to try. For dessert the restaurant had these cookies that looked a bit like Fig Newtons—a pastry crust wrapped around a core of sweetened dates, which we fell in love with. Our tour guide had informed us earlier that they are a specialty in this region of Tunisia, and we ate them for dessert and snuck some in napkins for snacks later. They were delicious!

And then, sleepy from all that we had eaten, we made our way back upstairs where we had a Grey’s Anatomy marathon—our brains are all too burned out with the hectic trip around Rome and the long and bumpy bus rides in Tunisia. We watched until we had practically fallen asleep where we lay, and woke up just enough to brush our teeth and take the computer off of the bed, before turning in. We had a 6:30 wake up call the next day and it wasn’t going to be pretty.

Unfortunately, it turned out that 6:30 was not the start of our day, we got woken up even earlier by the call to prayer that went off just outside of our room at 4:45 am. We had heard it the previous night while watching Grey’s, and it was so loud that we had to stop the show because it drowned out the speakers from our computer. I woke up rather suddenly with the nasal voice screaming in my ears, and covered the pillow in an attempt to drown it out, unsuccessfully. After about 10 minutes or so, it stopped, so I had another whole hour to sleep before getting woken up by my alarm and trying to start the day. I didn’t feel so bad in the morning but the sleep I had lost when the call to prayer went off made me really really sluggish all through the afternoon.

I was so full from the previous night’s dinner that I hardly ate breakfast, I just packed a lunch and nibbled on some eggs and cereal, and we hit the road, for a two hour plus ride in the sardine-can-mobile. But first we stopped at the Kariouan Mosque, the most famous in the city and highly important due to Kairouan’s identity as a highly sacred city. The mosque was pretty different from those we had seen in Istanbul—it was constructed out of a whitish colored stone, with a stout dome at the far end, a wide square courtyard in the center, and a square tapered minaret at the far end, of Babylonian style, like the kind that one would find in Assyria or farther afield. It was squat, a series of superimposed rectangles of decreasing size, with the pointed arch windows piercing it in groups of three all of the way up the front. The top of the minaret and of the surrounding walls of the courtyard had a series of notches, giving the whole thing a fortresslike appearance. Although we were not allowed inside, we peered in through the ornately carved and decorated doors to the prayer room, across from the minaret, to see the dimly lit space with pillars of Roman origin placed underneath pointed arch vaulting and completely carpeted with a dark red carpet in a geometric pattern. The far end of the prayer room had an apse that pointed the way to Mecca, the direction of prayer. This whole country is 99% Muslim, and it pervades the culture so much that even the ceilings of the hotels had arrows to orient the correct way for prayer.

It was a beautiful mosque, more severe in style than any of the other ones I had seen, and some of the blocks even had latin inscriptions left over from when the blocks were stolen from the great monuments at Carthage. They were stuck at random into the strong sides of the mosque at random—two inscriptions were placed side by side, one upside down and the other right side up, their original functions lost, placed as simple building blocks into the newer building. We walked around for a little while and then returned to the bus, settling ourselves in for another bumpy ride, jouncing along for about two hours, but what seemed like an eternity.

The first stop we made made the whole drive seem worth it—we had arrived at El Jem, the side of one of the best preserved amphitheaters in the ancient world. It was constructed much like the COlosseum in Rome, with concentric rings of barrel and groin vaulting, stacked three or four levels high. The outside had rows of arches, leading down to embedded columns of different orders depending on the level: composite on the bottom, followed by Corinthian and then Ionic; a little bit of a different sequence from the Colosseum but achieving a very similar aesthetic effect. Some of the stands had been reconstructed and we were able to move up and down the levels of the amphitheater at will, going down into the basement where we walked through a dark labyrinth of passages lit from above by small stone grates set into the amphitheater floor. This was where the gladiators and the beasts were likely kept, and along the main axis of the amphitheater, underground, were rows of cells market out from each other by an arched doorway, and holes along the walls indicated the placement of rings for detaining the fighters.

Moving up, we emerged onto the dusty floor of the arena, and see the deteriorated rows of arches left open to the sky, holes where the walls should be, moving around and up in the quest to raise the spectators up to see the events on the floor. And then Jess Bradshaw and I climbed up to the top levels, surveying from our view the remains of not only the structure itself, which stood, bones exposed, open to the sky, but also the city of El Jem, roads stretching in all four directions, the colorful shops of street vendors open on the square, the noise and the dust raising up toward us on our high perch. And then we retreated back down to the reconstructed areas of the stands to soak up the sun for a while, before we were forced into the close proximity of the bus and the endless bouncing on the roads.

We emerged from another long bus ride to see the remains of an old Roman city rising in the distance. We were at Thuburbo Maius, a Roman site in the middle of the rolling plains of Tunisia and chok full of ancient ruins, the walls left exposed to the elements, baking in the afternoon sun. The landscape was breathtaking: a sweep of flower-dotted plains leading up to rolling mountains, the whole scene blanketed by puffy white clouds.

The ruins themselves were quite substantial. We saw the remains of some old Roman baths, sectioned off in two places, the larger reserved for the summer months, when the rooms could more easily be heated by the sun, and the other for the winter months, located on the northern end of the site. It was smaller, the easier for heating, and less frequently used than the other. And farther afield was another Capitolium that had been hollowed out—we could step inside the platform itself and look up at the fragmented columns which stood open to the sky. And we continued on, past the fallen down bits of rubble in what is seeming like Tunisia’s characteristic creamy colored stone, wandering up and down the high grassed hillsides.

But we were growing tired, and cranky after the long rides in the car, and the scenery paled in comparison to the thought of returning to the hotel to be in one place and to rest. So we were happy enough to load up and take another long drive back to Tunis. I think that we had spent more time in the bus than doing anything else that day, and we were sick of it. We got back to Tunis after going though a traffic jam outside the city, which almost caused all of us to lose our minds.

But soon enough we were back in the noise and confusion of the city, lugging our stuff up the stairs and checking into our so recently vacated rooms. Stewart, Jeanna, myself, and a few others decided to make one last stop that day; we walked down the major thoroughfare of the city into where it dead ended into a warren of crowded streets and overflowing booths. This was the medina of Tunis, which contained everything we had seen the previous day, except much more tightly packed and at a much cheaper price. We walked past stalls of scarves, brass, and silver, stopping here and there to look at what we wanted or to bargain for the right price. The sales people here were zealous, but not too pushy. It was clear that they were there to solicit business, but not to make us feel uncomfortable, and I actually managed to bargain pretty successfully, I think. Its hard to not have a price tag or an idea of value on something, and although the guidebooks say to consistently offer ½ to 1/3 of the asking price, I had always worried about insulting the merchant. Here, I think that I finally hit my stride, at least once—not deviating too far from my goal price and not being afraid to leave if the price did not suit me. I stayed for a a little while, and when the clock struck 7:30 I returned to the hotel to meet what has become the usual crowd for dinner.

We ended up going to a local couscous place just around the corner of the hotel with a very energetic Tunisian that ushered us in with repeated gesticulations of “yes yes!” and we were seated, Ambrice, Jess Eisenberg and Vincoli and I around a small table for four, the others scattered in tables to the sides of us. We had a great dinner—piles of bread, and huge smoking plates of couscous and chicken, stocked full with vegetables and sauce. We ate as much as we could stuff in our bellies—so happy to be having a full meal and one that came at the happy price of 5 dinar—about $3.50. It was great, and we had wonderful conversation and laughter.

That night we returned to the hotel to indulge ourselves in a movie night—the movie of choice was Brokeback Mountain, which I really enjoyed although it was very serious subject matter for a zone-out movie. But we did watch the whole thing, and I was so enthralled I did not even think about falling asleep, a common problem when we come home after such exhausting days. And then finally we fell asleep, ready for the flight to Florence.