The last leg of the trip that David and I took together was
in Tuscany. We stayed in a small town called Montecatini, from which we took
trains each day to neighboring cities. To be honest, we chose Montecatini,
which we affectionately called “Monty,” because it was the cheapest place to
stay in Tuscany. We were expecting a run-down ghost town, but we found an
adorable spa town, complete with good restaurants and gelato and a huge park
and a funicular. For the first time on this trip, we were the only “youths”
staying at our hotel, which was actually nice and in the middle of town.
Basically, we loved Monty.
Our first night there was a little rough though. David
hadn’t meditated in almost 2 weeks, which we both knew was going to end badly
but who wants to meditate when you’re travelling? Basically, we went to find
dinner and it took awhile and we finally settled for some rather crappy pizza
and then David stopped acting like himself and we realized he needed to
meditate. We rearranged our plans for the next morning, so that David could go
to the park and journal, while I walked around town and bought lunch supplies.
Then we boarded a train to Pisa, which we unfortunately ran to catch (only to
realize that we needn’t have run. We ate lunch on the train, bought a little
guidebook at the train station, and then did some processing while walking
around the river Arno in Pisa. We got some tasty gelato by the river, and then
took a roundabout route the Leaning Tower. We meant to walk there directly but
got a little lost and ended up stumbling upon it, which was really cool. After
laying in the grass and reading our guidebook’s section on the Tower, we bought
tickets to enter the other monuments in the Piazza dei Miracoli: the Cathedral,
the Baptistery, and the Monumental Cemetery. First, we entered the Cathedral,
which looked like a cathedral. It was huge, with impressive paintings covering
the walls and the tomb of the patron saint of Pisa, whose name I’ve forgotten.
The most impressive part, though, was the pulpit. Around the top, there were
intricate carvings depicting the life of Jesus that were just amazingly
expressive and detailed. Next, we entered the accompanying Baptistery. As soon
as I began reading from our guidebook, an administrative man started shushing
everyone and then, from the center of the Baptistery, he began singing. The
shape of the Baptistery amplified his voice in a beautifully powerful way that
made me think about what it must have been like to hear that when it was built
in the 12th century. After the sound demonstration, David took the
stairs to the top of the Baptistery. While he was gone, I heard someone whistle
Rue’s four-note song from Hunger Games.
A few other whistlers followed the first, until the administrator shushed them,
and I thought that whoever started that chain must be so cool. Of course, when
David came back he looked like a kid in a candy shop and said, “Did you hear me
whistle??” After the Baptistery, we saw the Monumental Cemetery, which actually
wasn’t that big. It was almost completely destroyed by bombs in World War II,
and it still in the process of being restored.
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| Panorama at the Piazza dei Miracoli (left to right: Baptistery, Monumental Cemetery, Cathedral, and the Leaning Tower) |
The next day, we went to Florence and had a pretty rough
day. Last year, when I was in Florence with my grandparents, I absolutely loved
it. It was my favorite city we visited, and I had very fond memories (and high
expectations) associated with it. I suppose I should have foreseen
disappointment. When we arrived, David started getting stressed out by the
crowds and our inability to find the Accademia, which houses Michelangelo’s David. We were expecting a long wait,
but we didn’t even stand in line for five minutes before entering the
Accademia. David (the statue, not the
boyfriend) was just as amazing as I’d remembered him, and David (the boyfriend)
was appropriately impressed. We had a good half hour of wandering around and
looking at art and then David disappeared. I spent a good 10 minutes looking
for him and getting frustrated, and just as I was about to give up and move on,
he came wandering by and saw me. Apparently, he’d spontaneously decided to go
back to the first room, and hadn’t thought to tell me. In hindsight, it really
doesn’t sound like that big of a deal, but in the moment it felt very
disrespectful, so we sat in the courtyard and talked about it for awhile before
moving on. By the time we left the Accademia, we were really hungry. We had
planned to go to a nearby market for lunch, but when we got there, it was
crowded and loud and overwhelming and did I mention crowded? We tried looking
around but we realized pretty quickly that it wasn’t going to work. Once we
left, we didn’t know what to do. David ended up getting a kebab, and then we
looked at tourist menus until we found a suitable one. When we sat down, I
realized that it was the same restaurant where my grandparents and I had
stopped, under similar circumstances, the year before. Given the vast number of
touristy restaurants in Florence, I was shocked. I was also comforted because I
remembered the food being pretty good. We got some yummy pizza and veggies,
before heading to the Duomo.
Last year, the Duomo was one of my favorite things we did in
Florence. I sped up the 450-ish stairs in the dome and the adjacent bell tower,
and I felt that the space actually managed to be peaceful in the middle of a
big city. This time was very different.
David waited in line outside the Duomo, while I went to buy
tickets for the dome and the Baptistery. I was hesitant to pay 10 euros for my
ticket, given that I wasn’t sure if I could even climb up the dome with my
knee, but I decided to go for it anyways. As we walked into the Duomo, there
were these two men standing at the entrance, and one of them looked at me and
said gruffly, “No shorts.” I was stunned, and then confused. Everyone else was
walking by and I was told to stop. The man just kept saying “No shorts” with no
trace of sympathy or an offer to help. He merely pointed at a stack of hideous
baby blue ponchos. I went to grab one, but then the woman behind the counter
turned a sign around that read, “1.50 euro.” When it became clear that I was
not paying to enter the church at everyone else got to enter for free, the
woman suggested I try tying my jacket and David’s jacket around my waist to
form a skirt. I did, and I went into the church, but by this time the entire weight
of patriarchy in the church had came crashing down on top of me. I couldn’t
believe that two men were standing at the entrance to the church telling women
what they could and could not wear, apparently suggesting that they knew the
point at which women were showing too much skin for God. It was infuriating and
demoralizing, especially as a woman who struggles with body image, to be told
that my body, dressed appropriately for the weather, needed to be covered up in
order to enter a sacred place. On the other hand, I understood that I was
entering a religious place and should be respectful. Even so, I was leveled by
the power that religion has over how people perceive themselves, and the
fundamental patriarchy in the church and society. I just couldn’t move past the
idea that men were denying women free access to the Cathedral because of their
clothing. To me, it reflected society too accurately for comfort.
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| David being silly in front of Santa Maria Novella |
After standing by a pew with David and quietly crying for a
bit, I let go of the idealized notion I’d had of the Duomo, and we decided to
move on. We would come back to Florence the next day and try again, but at that
moment, we had to get out of the city. We took a train back to Monty and
decided to take the funicular to the top of the hill by the city. After getting
lost (and accidentally breaking into an outdoor classical concert, whoops) we
found the funicular, which was adorable. It was old and red, and it went so
slowly. When we got to the top, the view was just fantastic. We took a nice
walk around the perimeter of the hill (it wasn’t that big) and found a
restaurant for dinner. Dinner was lovely. We ordered caprese salad, a
traditional Tuscan soup, and spaghetti ragu. When it came time to order
dessert, though, we pretty much crashed and burned. David ordered immediately
after dinner, without asking if I wanted anything or looking at a menu, which
basically made me feel like I shouldn’t eat dessert. I knew that it shouldn’t
bother me so much, so I tried to let it go but it was really obvious that I was
shut down. David got frustrated that I was overreacting so much. He is trying
really hard to support me while I’m working on my issues, but it’s hard for me
to see because it’s just so easy to set them off. We talked for the thousandth
time about how he can support me best, with the understanding that sometimes he
will still mess up and I will still overreact.
(On a related note, on Wednesday, we were talking about our
plans for after we went our separate ways the next day. I was saying that what I’d
want for breakfast would depend on what I was going to have for lunch and David
turned to me with this giddy look in his eyes and says, “I’m not eating lunch
with you tomorrow!” It was like he had found a “Get Out of Jail Free” card. I
cracked up and he started trying to explain that he didn’t mean to sound so
excited. It’s just really stressful to eat with me, and I know that. It was
absolutely hilarious how excited he sounded to just walk into a restaurant that
looked good and eat there, instead of the painstaking process of
research/menu-reading/atmosphere-examining that I go through.)
The next morning, we
took a train to Florence and tried again. When we got off the train, we started
acting like we’d never seen the city before: “Look at that church! It’s so
beautiful!” “Hey look! A park! With a coffee shop and, what’s that over there,
is that the Duomo?” The silliness worked, I suppose, because we had a fantastic
day.
As we were leaving the train station, this guy in the street
stopped cold and stared at David, and then David did the same to him and then
they hugged. It was surreal, until David explained that this man was Austin
Somebody-Or-Other who went to his church growing up. Apparently he and his wife
were honeymooning there. His wife and I both commented on how we weren’t
surprised David and Austin ran into someone they knew.
After our weird encounter, I got coffee on the way to the
Duomo, where we waited in line to climb the dome. Apparently, drinks are not
allowed in the Duomo, so I kind of chugged it in line with the knowledge that
at least that rule isn’t sexist. I was really worried about climbing the Duomo
with my knee. I was trying to be okay with turning around if I felt like I
should, but I never ran into a problem. I just climbed carefully and slowly,
and everything was fine! It was great. The views at the top were fantastic and
we got some beautiful pictures. I loved getting the see the frescoes on the
dome up close again. They were just as creepy as I remembered (they depicts the
Last Judgment). On the way down the
stairs (we counted 440, but we saw a bunch of different figures, all between
400 and 450), David’s knee started to hurt pretty badly. We may both be getting
our knees treated this summer. After the Duomo, we visited the Baptistery,
which looked like a baptistery. The impressive feature to me is actually the
doors. Well, one specific door. The panels depict biblical scenes by Ghiberti,
who won the commission this massive competition. The panels are impressive, but
the story is what makes them cool to me.
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| View of the Campanile from the Duomo |
Then we went to the Bargello, a museum in a old
prison/castle, which houses a huge art collection including Donatello’s bronze David, which (boyfriend) David wanted to
see. I’d already seen it last year, and it cost a fair amount to go in, so I
waited outside while he saw David.
Then we walked to this pizza place that I’d found online, which turned out to
be closed. We punted and ate at this buffet across the street, which turned out
to be great (yummy bread and salad!). After lunch, because we figured we hadn’t
climbed enough stairs already, we hiked up to Piazzale Michelangelo, which
overlooks the city. It was cool to see a panoramic view of the city from a
non-central vantage point. We also walked to see St. Miniato church, which was
just behind the Piazzale. The church was very old (12th century I
think) and not at all touristy. It houses the remains of St. Miniato, who first
brought Christianity to the area and was martyred. I thought that the
underground room devoted to his grave would be creepy, but it actually felt
very sacred. There was a glass section with pieces of the saint’s remains
visible (this has a name, but I’ve forgotten it), and as I was sitting there
looking at it, it hit me that saints are not entirely fictional characters.
Intellectually, I obviously knew this but something about actually seeing bones
and a tomb made it clearer to me, which I suppose is the point of having the
tomb in the church. It rained a little while we were in the church and cooled off
for our walk down the hill and to gelato. The gelato was so delicious, and
there was an apparently important tennis match being played on TV, which I
enjoyed and David ignored. After gelato, we walked to St. Croce, a church/art
museum, which we decided was too expensive to go into. Then we walked back to
the Duomo so we could look inside once more (my shorts were still too short but
I’d brought a scarf to cover myself with this time). It was much prettier when
I wasn’t crying and lamenting patriarchy.
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| View of Florence from Piazzale Michelangelo |
We wandered around a little more, walking through some
markets and the Ponte Vecchio, a bridge famous for its expensive jewelry shops.
Then we caught a train back to Monty and had dinner at a restaurant called “Il
Piccolo.” We ordered yummy thin-crust pizzas and this amazing eggplant
appetizer, and found out afterwards that their specialty is their pasta. So we
decided to come back the next night and order pasta. After dinner, we went to
get some gelato at the place we’d found earlier, which was delicious.
The next days, our last day of travel together, we decided
to go to small neighboring town called Prato. It was a rather ill-fated trip,
to be honest, but we managed to salvage the day well. First off, we overslept
and had to take a later train than we’d meant to. Then our later train was
delayed about half an hour (for a half hour trip). When we finally got there,
we went looking for this pizza place that I’d found and it was a really long
walk away from the center of town. When we got there, we found that it was
closed, and we were really hungry and didn’t know where to eat. We ended up
spending about an hour searching for somewhere to eat. Finally, we gave up our
search for pizza and settled for pasta at this adorable café, which I really
wish I could have enjoyed more. In hindsight, it was great. Our waitress spoke
literally one word of English (“Good”) and the food was delicious. I just
couldn’t calm down because the plan had changed and I didn’t know exactly what
I was ordering or how it would come prepared and I couldn’t ask for things I
wanted because I didn’t speak Italian. Basically, I was a big ball of stress.
See why David was excited to not eat lunch with me the next day?
Anyways, after lunch, we went to the biggest church in town,
which boasts some frescoes by Filipo Lippi, who is apparently famous. We saw
them and then took a bus to a Medici Villa that is about 20 minutes outside the
city. Entrance was free and the grounds were beautiful. From what we gleaned
from glancing in the windows, the inside was gorgeous too. We could have gone
inside, but only with a guided tour that we were afraid would trap us into an
hour of watching people look at furniture. So we played cards on the grounds
instead, and then took a bus back to Prato and train back to Monty. Once we
were back in Monty, our day improved considerably. We walked to the park and
watched puppies (a Golden Retriever puppy came up and licked David’s hand, and
I think he’s finally sold on the necessity of dogs in life), and played cards.
Then we went to the hotel to back up, before heading to our restaurant for
dinner. I was brave and tried a new appetizer that I’d been admiring:
cantaloupe with Parma ham. It was tasty and fun to try, even if I wouldn’t
necessarily order it again. Then I had tagliatelle with clams, mussels,
octopus, and cuttlefish (I was feeling really brave), which was so excellent.
It reminded me of the clam linguine my family used to make all the time. After
dinner, we went to get gelato again. Luckily, our gelateria was right around
the corner from our restaurant. It was so tasty!
The next day neither of us wanted to start the day, because
it would mean accepting that we had to take trains to different cities. Our
whole big adventure to Europe together was coming to an end and we simply would
not go along with it. Except that we had to. So we eventually got up, decided
to take a later train than we’d planned and went for a walk around Monty. We
came back to the hotel and checked out, and ate breakfast before going to the train
station. Both of our routes went through Florence, so we took that train
together. Once in Florence, we needed reservations, so we waited in an eternal
line and decided to push our departure back once more, so that we could go sit
outside the train station and eat together before going our separate ways (so
David ended up eating lunch with me anyways, whoops). Eventually, we actually
did have to say goodbye and it was awful. Neither of us wants to go back to
long-distance-ing or even living 45 minutes apart. It’s just so great to spend
so much time together. We’ll really miss it.
The rest of David’s trip will take him to Rome, Pompeii,
Venice, Bratislava, and then back to Prague. I, on the other hand, took a train
to Milan and then a flight to Athens the next morning. When I got off the train
in Milan, I suddenly realized how much worse travelling is when you’re alone. I
had to just stop and make a detailed mental checklist so I wouldn’t get
completely lost in the craziness of the huge station. Eventually, after more
than an hour, I made it to my hostel, which was a good ways outside of the
center of town. I checked in and collapsed on one of the spare beds. I chugged
my water bottle and ate a snack while checking Facebook. Eventually, I was
rested enough to go outside again. I went walked to find a pizza place I’d
looked up online because I still hadn’t had thick-crust pizza and that wasn’t
okay. On my way I walked through a few parks, one of which featured a huge
group of men and women playing cards, and a grocery store. I walked back the
train station and bought a train ticket that would take me to the Milan airport
the next morning (the airport is 50 km outside the city). Then I went to dinner
and it was so fantastic. The pizza was perfect and cheap, and then I even found
a gelato place with mint chocolate gelato. It was a great last night in Italy.
The next morning, I woke up early, packed up, and took the
metro to the train station, where I caught a train to the airport. I ended up
getting to the airport 2.5 hours early and to the gate 1.5 hours early. The
check in desk wasn’t even open when I showed up. Apparently, when David isn’t
with me I just turn into him.
The trip in Greece with my famiy was excellent. We were on a
little ship with just the six of us (my parents, sister, and grandparents) and
Tomek, our skipper (which I quickly laearned is the term for the captain of a
small boat). We travelled around the Peloponnesian Peninsula and to a few small
islands, including Poros and Hydra (an island with almost no cars). We explored
the small towns on those islands and went swimming secluded beaches. It was
really very idyllic. But more than being in Greece, it was mostly just
wonderful to reconnect with my family after being apart for so long. After being
on the boat for a week, we spent four days in Athens. The city was a little
stressful after the tranquility of the boat, but after adjusted we had a nice
time visiting all the touristy sites.
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| Surprisingly well-preserved ampitheater in Epidavros |
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| Beautiful! |
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| Poor donkey on Hydra |
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| Acropolis from the Agora |
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| Best preserved temple at the Agora in Athens |
We just arrived home this afternoon, and
I’m setting about to adjusting to home life again. The absence of our fluffy
puffball of love is palpable, and I know that will be the hardest part of this
transition. We are going puppy shopping soon, I think. Other than that, though,
coming home has been wonderful.
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| Sign in the airport! |
As we were landing in the Austin airport, I remembered my
dad driving me there very early one morning in February. At that time, I felt
like I would never come home. My semester in Prague, as exciting as it seemed,
also seemed eternal and intimidating. Now that I am home, having experienced so
much over the past four months, I am still astounded that I had this
opportunity. I feel so blessed.
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