Venezia! (or, if you prefer: Venice)

Ciao!

Today I have the lovely treat of pictures taken in Italy! After all this time, I’m finally getting to them. Enjoy.

31 August, 2008


Lyndon and Brandon on the train. I’m not sure where this picture is from…I thought it was from Vienna to Venice, but we had a compartment for that ride, not seats, so I’m not clear on where we were going in this photo, but I really like it, so it’s going in, hehe.


Here’s one of Lyndon and Brandon on the train from Vienna to Venice. To catch the train we had to wake up extremely early, haul all of our luggage across Vienna onto a very crowded tram car, and pile into our compartment, all before 6:30 am. It was nice, though, because the four of us had a compartment to ourselves, and we were able to play cards for most of the ride. Also, halfway through the trip, Brandon and I got up to go to the dining car, and discovered that our good friends Vivian and Caitlin were on the train with us. Spastic greetings ensued.


Heath and me looking super cheesy.


Lyndon looking out of the train as we went through a tunnel.


The train ride through the Alps was beautiful, and we all took dozens of pictures of the scenery, but not many of mine turned out. Here’s one of a fantastic aqua-colored river that we passed, complete with Brandon and Heath photographing in the foreground.


Lyndon being goofy.


Venice!! The walk to our hotel was fairly awful, because we all had large luggage, it was very hot, and we had to cross three or four stepped bridges. But the hotel was lovely, and we met up with the rest of our class and our two professors. Then a group of us took a waterbus to the beach nearby, and went swimming in the Adriatic Sea! It was gorgeous and refreshing after a long day of travel and luggage lugging. That night, we went out for aperitifs and dinner as a group in the Jewish Ghetto. It was quite pretty.


My table at dinner: starting in the foreground, moving back and to the left we have Liz, Kevin, Heath, Vivian, Brandon, Caitlin, Lyndon, and Sarah R. We had our own little back room with three tables, because Cinzia, our professor from Roma, is very talented at negotiation. For dinner I had spaghetti with clams, and it was entirely delicious, a perfect first Italian meal.


This crazy accordion player came into the room near the end of the meal, and would not leave me alone. It was fairly humorous for everyone, including me, if a little embarrassing. Vivian took this photo, by the way.


1 September, 2008


Our second day in Venice, we went on a crazy Cinzia-style walking tour of beautiful architecture, starting with a short trip by waterbus. Here are Vivian, Brandon, and Caitlin on the waterbus.


Classic Venice: Gondolas.


Me on the waterbus, cheesy as usual.


Collection of buildings, canalside.


View inside the waterbus – the curly hair in front of me is Sarah R, and Vivian is the girl with the thick blonde braid.


We went up the bell tower in Piazza San Marco and got to look down over the Piazza. This is a view of Basilica San Marco and Venice behind it.


Me, Vivian, and Caitlin. No, that’s not a green-screen. We’re really there. =)


Heath, Brandon, Lyndon, and an awkwardly intrusive pair of binoculars in the bell tower.


More pretty Venice.


Kevin (boy on the left) telling some funny story to a group at the top of the bell tower. Included is Caitlin, Kristen, Kendall, Adam, Sarah B, and Jen’s hair.


Lyndon and Heath in the bell tower.


Viv in Piazza San Marco


The best way to see Venice is to get yourself lost down the labyrinthine streets and alleys. We did this a lot. Shown are Cinzia, Caitlin, Lyndon, and Vivian.


More alley ramblings and people’s backs.


A rare sight – grass in Venice. This is Cinzia doing what Cinzia does best – explaining something cool, in great detail, without being boring, and without using any notes. She’s quite fantastic as a tour guide and professor.


Ciao, Venice!


The group, walking along a canal.


Cinzia somehow convinced the staff of the Molina Stucky Hilton that we, as architecture students, should be allowed free reign of this beautiful and historic building. This was after a whole day of walking Cinzia-speed (fastest speedwalking possible) around Venice, so we were quite tired, as you can see. From left to right is: Heath, Brandon, Lyndon, Jeff, Sarah R, Sarah B, Adam, Jackie, and Matt.


The tour went on, despite our fatigue, to several churches. Here are Rachel G, Kristen, Ryan, Jackie, Jen, and Caitlin in front of one of them.


That evening, while waiting for people to finish getting ready, we all congregated outside of the hotel and took photos. This was our hotel, by the way. It was quite lovely and comfortable, except that it was next to a church whose bells were directly outside the window of the room I shared with Caitlin, Vivian, and Liz. The church bells rang over a hundred times at 8 o’clock each morning. It would have been great if I weren’t sleeping most mornings at that time.


Vivian.


Caitlin and me, canalside.


Liz, Vivian, and Caitlin.


Okay, so we all wanted to be in this picture, and to try to achieve that we made a pile of purses and put my camera on top with the self-timer on. Unfortunately the camera was very crooked, and we all leaned in order to compensate for it, but leaned the wrong way. This photo came out so well, but crooked, that we decided to make crooked photos our group trademark in Italy. There are many more to come. In this one we have: Caitlin, Jen, Rachel G, Kristen, Jackie, LJ, Kendall, Vivian, Jeff, Liz, me, and Kevin.


Over the summer, Caitlin, Vivian, and I all bought the same pair of Birkenstocks. We found out that we had done this when we met up in Venice. It’s kind of silly but kind of fun. Liz just had black flipflops, but she’s included in the photo.


Another group shot that I decided to take instead of be in: Liz, Sarah R, Kristen, Jen, Vivian, Caitlin, Kevin, Rachel G, Jeff, Adam, and Sarah B. The twelve of us went out to dinner together that night.


Dinner was outrageously fun. We got lost on purpose and found this completely deserted pizza restaurant, perfect for a group of twelve. The waitstaff was extremely fun – they talked to us in Italian and English, tried to encourage us to speak Italian, and allowed us to coerce them into giving us free wine. Vivian is an expert negotiator when it comes to haggling – we got several free carafes of wine, and the pizza was delicious. Shown are Vivian, Kristen, Sarah R, Jeff, and me.




That's all for photos. As far as my life in Roma goes, things are lovely. We're still doing a lot of work, but it's in ROME, so I can't really complain, haha. One interesting thing we've been doing is site analysis for the project we're going to start in about a week, which involves sketching in Piazza Venezia, a square near our apartment. The Piazza is constantly crammed with tourists, because it houses this gigantic monument of Vittorio Emmanuele that everyone wants to see. So sketching there is a game of finding places to sit, stand, and lean where no one will blow a whistle in your ear and tell you to move, having broken-Italian conversations with tourists and locals who stop to peer at your work, and periodically having to wait for large groups of people to move out of your sight lines. I might post some photos of my sketches at some point, but who knows.

I hope everyone's October is going well!

Love,
Rachel

The Island of Ventotene

Hello!

I spent this weekend on the tiny island of Ventotene, a one-hour train ride plus two-hour ferry ride away from Roma. It was completely beautiful, and I'll do a fully detailed post with pictures at some point, but for now I have this spastic video that I took during the sunset on Saturday. For reference "Ventotene" means "holds the wind." You'll see that it's an accurate name indeed.



Shown are: Lyndon (boy with the grey hoodie being a bit obnoxious), Jeff (boy with the glasses), and Liz (blond girl). Several other people are in the background.

Pictures of Venice soon!

Love,
Rachel

I voted! + more photos

Today I sent in my absentee ballot!
I encourage everyone who reads this to participate in the US government by voting in the general election a month from tomorrow!
For those of you who aren't in your hometowns for election day, votefromabroad.org is an excellent resource for absentee voting, and it's not too late!

Propaganda aside, I'm finally finally finally posting more photos! These photos are still from the infamous first two weeks of travel, because the internet in my apartment is too slow for me to upload Torino and Roma pictures to Flickr, but I will try to have

28 August, 2008

We spent the day wandering about Munich with no clear purpose.


We had sausage and fried potatoes for breakfast that morning, at a stall next to this flower stand.


Walking around Munich – look, it’s the Frauenkirche!


Lyndon and Brandon stopped to buy raspberries and antics ensued.


We wandered into this garden place that was surrounded by arcades. Arcades of the column variety, not the videogame variety.


More of the garden.


This dome was in the middle of the garden.


Inside the domed building were some fishy-looking fountains.


I kept seeing this building from afar, and taking pictures of it in all its crazy, curli-cue glory. I still don’t know what it is, but it makes me happy.


We went to the Pinakothek der Moderne, a museum of modern art and architecture. This is the ceiling in the museum’s main atrium. They had some interesting exhibits with original drawings from some cool architects, and a really fascinating antique furniture exhibit, but other than that I thought the place left something to be desired.


That night we went to the largest biergarten in Munich – Hirschgarten. It seats 18,000 people, although there were probably only a few thousand there the night we went. I got ½ hendl (half a hen) and German potato salad. So delicious. The boys all had fries and wurst.


I tried to capture a bit of the biergarten. We were near the edge, so imagine rows and rows of these tables behind me (the person taking the picture). This is Brandon, Heath, and Lyndon still, by the way. This biergarten is amazing, by the way, and you should go there if you ever go to Munich.

We stayed at the biergarten for a long time that night. Not drinking heavily, just people-watching and being part of the fantastic ambience that places like that have. Afterwards, we went back to the hostel, where we used the internet and hung out for awhile, at which point I convinced Lyndon to accompany me to the hostel bar. We met a few Aussies and an Irish guy who, like us, were traveling around Europe. All of the people in our hostel seemed to be young and chipper and eager to be out in the world. Meeting and chatting with people in the hostel bar turned out to be a great way to spend an evening.

29 August, 2008

On the morning of the 29th, the boys and I woke up just in time to catch our late-morning train to Vienna. The ride there, through the Alps, was beautiful, and I wish I had pictures, but my camera doesn’t do through-a-moving-train-window shots very well. We got there in the afternoon, and after settling in and having a kebab dinner, it was dark out. So, all of my pictures from the sightseeing walk we took look terrible, because my camera hates darkness. All I’ve got from that day are the following:



We had to split up into groups of two because Lyndon and Heath made reservations before Brandon and I, and by the time we tried to do it, it was too late. So we were in different hostels, but it was fine. They were fairly close to one another. These are Brandon and me in our hostel room. We’ve got on our “oh god, it was quite a hike to get to this hostel and we have too much luggage” faces. We’re geeks.


And the only other picture is through the window of a bread shop we passed. It’s a turtle-shaped bread! A bit like the one Mom and I made a few days before I left for Europe. Homesickness strikes at odd times. <3

30 August, 2008

Our first full day in Vienna! We spent the day wandering, just like we did our last day in Munich. I’m sorry there are so many pictures of buildings, I promise there are more people in my Italian pictures! Just wait for it.


A shot down a Viennese street.


There was some sort of film festival going on at this building, Rathaus, and there was a gigantic food court with “international” foods – a stall for each of several dozen countries. Of course there was plenty of beer and wine as well.


We had lunch there. I had some sort of Caesar salad in an edible bowl. It was yummy. Lyndon makes ridiculous faces.


Here’s a shot of the food court.


After lunch, we happened upon the Austrian parliament building, in all its Greco-Roman splendor.


It was very bright out, and Brandon just so happens to be a rock star.


Boys on the steps of Parliament. Classic Lyndon photo stance included. Heath and Brandon are the epitome of casual.


Me and Athena hanging out in front of the Parliament building.


We discovered a rose garden near the Parliament building and had a rest.


Random statue and cupola.


This is Loos Haus, designed by Adolf Loos, a crazy crazy man. We spent days talking about this building in our architectural history class. It was completely astonishing to stumble upon it in the middle of Vienna, although I guess if I’d paid closer attention I might’ve known it was there. This sort of thing happens a lot in Europe, I later realized.


St. Stephan’s as seen from a side alley.


Shot of a walking street with shops. Look at the superimposition of modern and old architecture. Cool.


I was standing in a crowd watching street performers, and I saw a little girl let go of her balloon. Photo op! The sky obliged by being beautiful.


St. Stephan’s Cathedral. We went into the cathedral, but none of my interior photos turned out. =(


‘Nother street shot.


I like flower stalls. =)

So there you have it! Three days in one post! The next photo post I make will be Venice photos, complete with people, so you’ll get to see all the jolly people with whom I’ve been living and working for the past month (Lyndon, Heath, and Brandon are three of those people, by the way).

Hope to be posting again soon,
Love,
Rachel