Notes From a Traveler

The Balcony of Shakespeare’s Juliet in Verona

Sat, 16 Jun 2012 12:36:52 -0400

The Balcony of Shakespeare’s Juliet in Verona

Just had a wonderful after-dinner snack—Prosciutto and...

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 14:30:51 -0400

Just had a wonderful after-dinner snack—Prosciutto and Melon.

Past few weeks! Ca’Foscari, Basilica di San Marco, Fun...

Tue, 05 Jun 2012 17:58:00 -0400

Past few weeks! Ca’Foscari, Basilica di San Marco, Fun times with friends. #Venice

"Heard that Shaharazad Mohammed gets my blog sent to her email…Best. Granny. Ever."

Mon, 04 Jun 2012 19:48:00 -0400

“Heard that Shaharazad Mohammed gets my blog sent to her email…Best. Granny. Ever.”

Best beach day. ever. majormoves: Lido Island today with the...

Sun, 03 Jun 2012 10:14:46 -0400

Best beach day. ever.

majormoves:

Lido Island today with the homies #Venice #Italy (Taken with instagram)

re-see: Padua.

Thu, 31 May 2012 08:35:19 -0400

re-see:

Padua.

Padua... FINALLY.

Thu, 31 May 2012 08:34:41 -0400

So we went to Padua almost a week ago so I figured I should blog about it soon.

Padua is a the university town west of Venice about 45 minutes away! We started the day taking the regional train from the Venezia Santa Lucia Stazione to Padua! When we arrived walked about five or six blocks from the train station to the heart of the city. The bustling portion of Padua bans vehicles from operating within the tiny streets therefore it’s great for walking! We got to see a number of things including the amazing Giotto frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel (we had to watch a move in a cooling chamber to lower our body temperature before we entered the chapel because the body heat causes humidity that can ruin the frescos. :O that’s so crazy).

One of my fellow DIV-ers (Duke in Venice-ers for you slow folk), Christian (Kerr, not Kreb) called me a hipster because i wore a hat and had headphones. He also was really aiming for a blog shoutout…so there it is. Here’s a shortlist of interesting things that happened to me while I was in Padua

Got cursed out in Italian by a priest in La Basilica di Santo Antonio for being dressed indecently. He told me I was “una vergogna” (a shame for you non-Italian speakers) and told me I needed to leave the church now. Of course I ran.
In this same church, after passing the tomb of St. Anthony (where people touch the tomb and utter a prayer) without touching the tomb a priest approached me, Victoria and Crystal and said, “If you want boyfriend, go touch the tomb and pray St. Anthony.” Of course I ran.
Bought the biggest carton of strawberries for 1 euro. I got such a stomach-ache and my fingers were blood-red but it was definitely worth it.
Found an amazing dress at this Italian department store called Coin, that was 30% Off.
Visited the FIRST MEDICAL SCHOOL EVER.

Overall Padua was amazing and less touristy than Venice, which was something I absolutely loved about the city.

"Stop worrying about the potholes in the road and celebrate the journey."

Wed, 30 May 2012 13:07:53 -0400

““Stop worrying about the potholes in the road and celebrate the journey.””

- Fitzhugh Mullan

San Marco, Bridges and the In-Between. AKA A Weekend without Internet

Mon, 28 May 2012 15:46:42 -0400

You know what spending an entire three or four days without internet on San Servolo means? Insanity…sheer madness. The running joke is that we’re living on Shutter Island and not having internet in our rooms only made us feel even worse! So…Let’s start from Day 4 and move on from there!

Day 4: Palaces, Cappucinos and Bridges

Our fourth day in Venice was jampacked and of course I didn’t sleep at ALL the night before! Victoria and I woke up extremely early and got dressed up for class in summer dresses for our first day of fabulous weather in Venice. After a mini-photoshoot (duh, do you know who we are?) and cappuccinos over chocolate croissants we headed to class. Our 1.5 hour long class went by relatively fast and then we headed over tot he mainland for lunch. Brandon, Victoria and I headed to Dorsoduro to Campo Santa Margherita for a quick bite before heading to Ca’Rezzonico. After breakfast, I ended up too full to eat anything and stumbled upon my NEW favorite beer (at least while I’m in Italy) Naturo Azzuro…so delicious! After our lunch, we met up with the rest of the DIV group at the San Zaccaria boat stop and walked over to Ca’Rezzonico. So just a lil background info: Ca’Rezzonico is an amazing palazzo on the Grand Canal (one of the main rivers in Venice) dedicated to the memorialization of 18th century Venice and what their homes looked like. First off the property was huge and extreemly beautiful! The homes feature 4 floors: the entrance to the estate/gardens, etc, the living quarters of the family, the living quarters of the relatives/brothers of the head of the house and at the highest floor the slave lodges. Each floor has decreasingly lower ceilings and the height of the ceilings were a determinant of status of the homeowners. Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take photos in the Palace, but I have a few that I snapped illegally (which everyone seems to do here even though there are a million and one signs that say not to!

We had a terrible microwaved pasta dinner at a small cafe after visiting the Palazzo, however the company seemed to mediate this terrible dinner! We met a wonderful couple and their grandson, James from New Zealand. James was such a little heartbreaker (half white, half Tongan) and they were such wooonnderful people…can’t exaggerate that anymore than I have. After dinner, it was back to San Servolo and straight to bed. My knees and feet were aching from a day full of walking!

The next day we were in Padua, however I’ll leave that for a post in and of it’s own because Padua has to be my favorite place in Italy thus far…yes even moreso than Venice. Padua is great in the sense that there are almost no tourists, Venice sucks in the sense that it is almost ALL tourists.

As for the rest of the weekend, here’s a snapshot:

Saturday: Slept all day (until 9 PM to be exact) and then went out to find dinner (such a struggle after 10:30 PM) ended up having an amazing dinner of fried calamari and a polenta cake! yum

Sunday: Explored Venice with Christian Kreb, Markia and Tammy! Had lunch at a fabulous place called Majer! I ate a grilled veggie croissant and an arancine ( fried ball of rice with prosciutto and cheese!) and topped it off with gelato…duh! Did some homework and relaxed on Shutter Island

Today we had class, where we discussed in depth the relationship between Byzantium/Constantinople/Zara and Venice and the influences the conquests of these lands had on Venetian architecture and culture. Afterwards we had the opportunity to visit the San Marco Basilica as a group and saw the amazing and ornate church in all it’s glory. The ceiling on the inside of the church is decorated with mosaics made of real gold that shimmer when the light hits them just right! Also we got an opportunity to see Pala D’Oro which there literally are no words for (Pala D’Oro means Golden Altarpiece). I apologize for the lack of photos but my camera conveniently died right as we were leaving the Basilica and I have yet to upload the photos!

After a lackluster dinner, I made a solo trip to one of the supermarkets Coop. I love walking around Venice alone because it gives me the opportunity to truly feel a part of the culture, the people and the city itself. I walked through Dorsoduro, Santa Croce and found my way to the grocery store along the Grand Canal! There I bought some snacks, lunch for tomorrow and of course Naturo Azzuro! I’m truly enjoying my time navigating the ferry boats and having people mistakenly speak to me in ONLY italian because my accent allows me to pass for a true Italiana! I honestly could see myself living in this country and can’t wait for what the rest of the summer has in store!

Ciao raggazi!

Symone

Palaces, Cappucinos, and Bridges! Day 4

Wed, 23 May 2012 16:50:31 -0400

Palaces, Cappucinos, and Bridges! Day 4

Wed, 23 May 2012 16:47:00 -0400

Hi All! This will be an abbreviated post, with more details to come tomorrow!

What I did today:

slept for 2 hours
woke up at 6:30 AM
planned an amazing project for the month in Venice. key word: BRIDGES
Had a chocolate croissant and cappucino for breakfast, 2 beers and an espresso for lunch and fettucine ragu for dinner!
Visited an amazing 17th century palace, Ca’ Rezzonico
Walked a ridiculous amount in Venice, so much that my knee and feet are swollen
Running on EMPTY.

Buongiorno Italia!

Wed, 23 May 2012 03:34:14 -0400

Buongiorno Italia!

"Victoria and I have a new goal for the month in Venice: pictures on every bridge in Venice!"

Wed, 23 May 2012 00:59:01 -0400

“Victoria and I have a new goal for the month in Venice: pictures on every bridge in Venice!”

Venice, the true concrete jungle: Day 3

Tue, 22 May 2012 20:01:18 -0400

Gutter spouts!

Venice, the true concrete jungle: Day 3

Tue, 22 May 2012 19:57:19 -0400

Guess what she stepped in...

Venice, the true concrete jungle: Day 3

Venice, The True Concrete Jungle: Day 3

Tue, 22 May 2012 19:54:00 -0400

“It’s hard finding your neighborhood; it’s even harder staying in your neighborhood”

-Fedner, one of my fellow Duke in Venice participants

Fedner, a friend in the program said the quote above and summed up my day in less than thirteen words. Today after getting to a rather (ehem) late start, my group and I headed to the mainland to explore our assigned neighborhood, Santa Croce. One of the aspects of the Duke in Venice program, which is based around a class solely about the city of Venice, is to explore an assigned neighborhood as a group. However the difficulty with exploring your neighborhood is that finding it is so troublesome because the streets don’t run on any type of grid, which is also therein the difficulty of remaining in your neighborhood.

We met to take the 12:40 PM vaporetto to the mainland and spent the day meandering through the winding, Venetian streets. Our assigned neighborhood is on the west side of the large s-shaped Grand Canal that divides Venice into two. After misreading the map, I left the navigating to my groupmate Brendan, who might I add we’ve deemed our Santa Croce compass. We examined a few things about our neighborhood as a group; our neighborhood was primarily residential, quiet and extremely ritzy! Another thing I noticed, hence the title of my post, is that there is no grass in Venice. Which makes complete and utter sense seeing as Venice is built on water…no dirt for plants to grow! The homes had tall brick walls, intricate stone balconies with cascading flowers and some were outfitted with turrets. A number of the homes have wooden verandas on the rooftops, that historically women were relegated to! Because Italian women weren’t allowed to be out in the piazzas and campos during the day with the men (who were all merchants) they would sit out on the verandas on their roofs, communicate with one another and know everything that was going on in their communities. After a lot of walking (without having breakfast) we found a little hole in the wall that took our lunch vouchers! We sat down to a wonderful, long lunch filled with pasta bolognese, Margharita pizza and roasted chicken!

I’ve also figured out why Italians drink so much espresso! After such a long lunch I was so tired, that the first bar I saw I immediately ordered a shot of espresso. Sidebar— the coffee here in Italy is 50 million times better than anything I’ve ever had in the states and the espresso was amazingly sweet. The shot was the perfect kick in the pants to keep me motivated to keep exploring the city. After a while of perfect weather, there was a bit of drizzling for the rest of the day, which consisted of finding the Millenium Wine Bar, going to the grocery store and observing Venetians.

Once I returned to San Servolo, I stayed far away from my bed and went to the library to do the assigned readings for tomorrow’s class. After about 2 hours of work, about twelve of us organized an evening outing back to Venice. We spent about two hours on the mainland which consisted of a live 5 piece band playing “New York, New York” in St. Mark’s Square, a Becks beer in a very random bar, and a scoop of chocolate gelato! Another fabulous day in Venice.

Ciao for now!

-Symone

Properly Acquainted: Day 2

Mon, 21 May 2012 19:12:03 -0400

Well here we are day two of my month long stay in Venice. Today I finally gained my bearings, as we had our first class. Our professor, Valerie Finucci, went through all the details about living on the island of San Servolo on Venice International University’s beautiful campus. We got our meal tickets which are amazing (more on that later), our VIU cards to print and access the library and stared to figure out the vapporetto (ferry) system. After class, most of the Duke in Venice students went to the bar and got cappuccinos, bellinis or croissants. The lovely thing about these meal vouchers is that they can be used practically anywhere in Italy because they are the meal vouchers that the Italian work force uses to eat. The law in Italy is that places of business must offer their employees either a cafeteria for breakfast, lunch and dinner or give their employees these vouchers. Pretty sweet deal if you ask me and the vouchers are worth €5 for breakfast and €8 for lunch or dinner. The best part: ou can use the vouchers for wine, spritz’s (more on these later) or any type of alcohol. The weather today has been fairly gloomy: rainy, cloudy and cold. Quite miserable, but hey I can’t complain simply because I am in freaking Italy!

After leaving the bar, I ended up taking a wonderful afternoon nap before we were set to leave San Servolo at 6 PM. We took the vaporetto from San Servolo to San Zaccaria, which was a quick, bumpy five minute ride to the mainland of Venice. Our professor gave us an amazing walking tour around the city, with amazing little facts about the history of the city. We also found a lot of places that take our meal vouchers on the mainland, which will be great for long days that we spend exploring the streets, churches and stores of Venice. We had a wonderful €13 dinner— I had a huge prosciutto and funghi pizza and a spritz- an Italian drink with sparkling wine, sparkling water, and apple flavoring. It was cheap and delicious and the pizza was absolutely HUGE! It took us quite a while to return back to the island after dinner, which ended at 10 PM and on one of the vaporetti we ran into three girls backpacking through europe from UF, FSU and UNC (of course Dukies and Tarholes attract like magnets!). Once we got back to the dorm VIctoria had finally arrived and told us the tale of how she got to San Servolo (it was hilarious!).

Ciao for now!

-Symone

Sono arrivata a Venezia!- Day 1

Sun, 20 May 2012 09:04:00 -0400

After an extremely bumpy flight, we touched down in Venice right before 10 AM. Though there was a lot of turbulence, our airplane had to wait in a 27 plane queue for take-off and the plane got abnormally hot then cold, it was an all around good flight. My highlights were watching the sky change as the sun began to rise— it truly is darkest before the dawn— and flying over these beautiful snowcap mountains (that I’m not too sure about where they were located).

All of the Dukies had received an email in regard to how many people would be arriving when and it turns out there were 8 of us. Luckily i knew three of the eight, then we all just sort of found one another. We met our TA outside of the baggage area where she directed us to a water taxi waiting to take us to the island of San Servolo, which will be our home for the next month. The airport was a pretty lengthy distance from the island and took about twenty minutes to get there.

Venice is truly a city surrounded by water, there were so many boats on the water on our way to San Servolo! We even got stopped by the water police to let a large group of gondoliers pass. Once we arrived at the island, we paid our taxi driver 150 euros ($191.00) for our taxi and proceeded to check-in! I’m staying a spacious double with our own private bathroom. The bathrooms have bidets, which of course makes me think of Halle Berry in BAPS and getting completely soaked (i think i’ll stay away from the bidet during this trip lol). I must say that I can’t complain about the accommodations at all! San Servolo is idyllic and extremely peaceful (Photos to come on a sunnier day)

Away we go

Sat, 19 May 2012 10:55:52 -0400

In typical fashion, I’m leaving the country for (a part of) the summer. Last year it was South Africa, which was one of the most profound, life-altering experiences I’ve had the pleasure of having, and this year I’m finally going to Europe— Italy to be precise.

Make sure you follow my blog over the course of the next month! I hope you enjoy it, comment on it and ask questions! I’ll be staying in Venice from May 20-June 20 then me and one of my linesisters will be traveling independently for a week!

Ciao ciao

Symone

Barely Scratched the Surface.

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 15:31:52 -0400

So on Friday, July 8th I will have been in Cape Town for 6 entire weeks. It’s frightening that the time has gone so quickly and tonight in particular reminded me that I have just begun to explore the wealth of culture and heritage that lies within The Mother (a nickname for Cape Town). Tonight myself and the fellow Duke Engagers had the opportunity, courtesy of D6, to attend a brilliant jazz performance. Entitled “Age is a Beautiful Phase”, the performance featured reknowned vocalist and composer Melanie Scholtz in dedication to the esteemed South African poet James Matthews. With the assistance of her band, Melanie used poems from almost every one of Matthews’ publications and composed the original music and score to produce the album Freedom’s Child, entitled after one of Matthews’ popular poems. If that isn’t talent, I don’t know what is. The crowd, seated in Cape Town’s City Hall auditorium, got not only to hear this brilliant music but also heard Matthews himself recite two of his poems that Melanie then put to music later in the program. I felt honored to be one of the thousand people who came out for this free event sponsored by the British Council, an organization that stresses cultural relations and educational opportunities. One of my fellow Duke Engagers described Melanie’s singing perfectly, “Her voice was like stardust.” Hopefully that describes the sheer bliss surrounding tonight’s performances.

After “Age is Beautiful Phase” I must say, I’m hungry. Hungry for more cultural experiences like the one I have taken part in tonight. I have a very limited amount of time left here in Cape Town and I want to experience as much of the city’s animated heritage and vibrant culture before I board my fifteen hour flight back to the Windy City. Luckily, I’ve been afforded extra free time this week and guess I should take a trip to the South African National Gallery to feed this craving.

Here’s a little more information on James Matthews. His books of poetry are: Cry Rage, Pass me a Meatball, Jones, No Time for Dreams, Poisoned Wells and Other Delights. His short stories have been collected in The Park and other stories. Also check out the artist, Melanie Scholtz on her website.