Piacenza!

Ciao! Im back in Verona after a long weekend of traveling... Thursday after Italian, my art history class went to Vicenza. That was fun, we saw some buildings, and Friday was an Italian holiday-an independance type holiday i believe. So there were italian flags lining the street, pretty cool. My favorite thing that we saw that day was the Teatro Olimpico. http://www.vicenzae.org/pages_242.html It was amazing, up to that point, it was my favorite thing Ive seen....and its still probably 2 or 3.
Friday, Sarah, Andrea, Keelin, Joey and I went to Milan for the day. Before Friday, Milan was one of those cities that if i made it there cool if not oh well... But now, I think thats my favorite city so far... the city itself maybe isnt quite as amazing as others, but the day was awesome. We got there around 10am or so-we took a train, then took a underground subway type thing to the Piazza Duomo. My favorite thing of this whole trip that Ive seen so far is when you first walk up the stairs from the subway to the piazza...its amazing. the palazza is a square and you walk up in the middle of it, the first thing you see is the Duomo...which is AWESOME!!!http://www.lebellezzeditalia.it/fotografie/foto%20lombardia/foto_milano/duomo_milano.jpg the inside is beautiful, but the best part is that you can take the stairs (or elevator) to the top of the Duomo and walk on the roof...I highly recommend it for anyone that goes to Milan. You go around and around up the stairs til you get to the first part of the roof, im not exactly sure where that would be on the picture...I thought that was the highest you could go...its not :) so then we found some more stairs and went up more to the roof. If you look at this picture, the roof is the triangle in the middle between the two spikes on either side. the base of the triangle is the roof. THEN you can go up a bit more by the highest point in back. you only go up 50 more steps, but you can walk more to the back. I loved it! There is so much detail that high up I was amazed. After the Duomo we had lunch, then went to Castello Sforzesco, that was pretty cool. Free so that made it even better. it was more artifact type stuff...The ceilings were really pretty. I think thats my favorite thing about the places we go...the ceilings in rooms are painted sometimes with little detail sometimes with a lot of detail, but either way...amazing. its gonna be rough going back to eggshell walls back home. Then we went to an art gallery...because it was a holiday it was free! That was really cool, a lot of Christian art again. BY the end of this trip we were experts on finding Saint Francis (brown robe with stigmata) Saint Sebastian (tied to something and pierced with arrows) Peter,(holds keys) John the Baptist (hes either beheaded or has animal skin on) Catherine-holding a spiked wheel, Bartholomew-holds his skin or a knife. I think there might have been a few more, but those we saw a lot. it wasnt really pretty to see, but Im appreciating the Christian art a bit more. We saw about a million crucfixes and about a million and a half Mary and the baby pictures.
came home friday night,
saturday we went to Siena, we ended up taking 4 trains to get there. one to bologna, switch to get to florence, take another train to get to another staion in florence, then from there to siena, but it was worth it...its beautiful-saw another Duomo, that one was amazing as well... then went to a museum, more art. then had dinner on the piazza del campo. I liked that piazza, its a fan shaped but square. We then took a train to Bologna where we were staying the night. it wasa packed train so sarah and i ended up in the same compartment as two Equadorians, we talked to them for a bit. we had two hotel rooms, andrea and keelin took one room and joey, sarah and i took the other. they had two stories, kinda like a loft, upstairs had two beds-sarah and i took that and joey slep downstairs. In bologna, we went to the main square area, then someone, a local, started talking to us and stuggested we got to this museum. he only spoke italian, and i understood him for the most part :) he spoke slow, which was nice. He took us up to the area that had an art gallery of Giorgio Morandi, lots of still art, which was nice for a change. then walked around then headed home around3...we shouldve been home around 5 or so... so the guy in the train station told us to take the 3:27pm...well the only train at 3:27 was to Piacenza...there werent any trains going to Verona on the board...the only train at 3:27 was to Piacenza so we figured it would just stop at verona on the way to piacenze, cuz the night before we took a train that was going to austria, but we got off at bologna. So we're on the train, it was supposed to be a 2 hour train ride... an hour and a half goes by and sarah looked at me and said 'Sherrie....we're in Piacenza' oops! end of the line. wrong train. so someone on the train who spoke english said we took the wrong train and explained to us that piacenza is not near verona...at all. other side of the country-awesome. From bolonga we shouldve gone north east i believe...we went north west. So we finally got a train from piacenza to milan to verona...the train to milan was 35 minutes late...and it pulls up and theres people standing near the window looking out...which was weird cuz every window had someone standing out...sometimes you get one or two to a car looking out.... so we get on board...the people were loooking out the window cuz they had to....people were sitting and standing. the train was packed! we barely got all of us on. We were all laughing...its call you can do after the weekend we had. so we got to milan, finally and back to verona around 8:30 or so... then sarah and i had dinner and listened to Roger Waters from Pink Floyd, which was playing in the arena, i think he's playing again tonight. It was pretty cool. well I better get going, Ciao!