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Poussin's Martyrdom of St. Erasmus

Well, this is my first blog in over a month and a half. 

Where do I start? 

Okay, so we were in Montepulciano, Italy for five weeks.  Monte-P (as I heard students calling it) is a gorgeous Tuscan hill town with panoramic, sweeping views.  Alas, it's also boring and out of the way, without a train station but with a rather crappy, unreliable local bus system.  Needless to say, we were often bored.  Field trips, thankfully, took us to Rome (twice for Gabriel and I, three for Julia), Florence (twice), Assisi, Perugia, Pisa, and Siena.  Nearby towns also visited include Chiusi, Pienza, Cortona, Orvieto, and San Quirico. 

Rather than going in to detail about every single day and event, I'll provide an overview of the experience.

Worst moment:  The final day(s).  Try this one on for size: Get two hours of sleep, wake up at midnight, trudge down with all your luggage to the bus stop, take a three hour group bus jaunt to Rome's Fiumicino Airport, wait a couple hours in the earrrr-ly morning, take a two-hour flight to Frankfurt, wait another two hours there, take a sleepless, student-filled 10-hour trip to Atlanta, wait at customs, be one of the last to retrieve your suitcases from baggage claim, take a cab ride over to a local hotel to retrieve your car, drive three hours home to Statesboro, and get to bed by 10:30.  Yuck. 

Food:  Well, the pizza was good.  The bread (which the Italians don't salt or apparently flavor) was horrible.  Rome had tremendous, unforgettable gelato,  Other than that, I wasn't too impressed by any one thing.  I'm sure if we were in Rome more, I would have had more memorable culinary experiences. 

Favorite sights:  Pisa's Camposanto Cemetery, St. Peter's (and its square), the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi, Orvieto's dome, San Marco Museum in Florence, Pantheon, San Ignacio Church and San Popolo in Rome. 

The apartment:  Undesirable.  Dank and poorly planned.  I got tired of spending time in it, honestly. 

Gabriel:  Loved Italy.  Didn't want to leave.  Loved the "staples" from the grocery store: shortbread cookies, pasta, pretzel sticks, farfalini (sp?) soup, yogurt, bananas.  He thoroughly enjoyed the various means of travel - bus, train, plane, shuttle, car, stroller... Fantastic in museums and churches and about town.  Never less than 100% happy. 

Julia:  The program really pushed her to the limit.  We were both ready to go fairly early on, but she had so much work to do and the field trip days were so hectic, that it was more of a job than a vacation or pleasure trip for her.  We had our moments, though.  We came to - not to sound too corny - some wonderful, tender, bonding realizations that we can't imagine spending our lives with any one other than the three of us. 

Works of art seen:  Well, I had a lofty goal of trying to see 103 works of art - if you remember me posting a list before I went.  Well, because of impracticalities of traveling to and fro Montepulciano, we didn't get up to Padua, Ravenna, and Venice, I obviously fell short of my goal.  I think I saw about 44, give or take.  Here are 10, in particular, that I loved:
- Giotto's fresco cycle of the life of St. Francis in Assisi's Basilica
- anything I saw by Michelangelo: the David, the Sistine Chapel, the Prisoners, Moses, the Risen Christ, Saint Paul
- Lorenzetti's Allegory of Good and Bad Government in Siena
- Signorelli's end-of-days fresco cycle in Orvieto
- Caravaggio's paintings in San Popolo and San Luigi Francesi in Rome
- Pozzo's marvelous ceiling and fake dome at San Ignacio 
- Fra Angelico's Annunication and frescoed cells in San Marco in Florence 
- Raphael's Madonna of the Goldfinch in the Uffizi 
- Parmigianino's Madonna With the Long Neck in the Uffizi
- Buffalmacco's Triumpf of Death and Last Judgment in Pisa

Artists I'm now more interested in:  Giotto, Pinturrichio, Cimabue, Pozzo, Martini, Perugino, Fra Angelico.  

Do I ever want to go back to Montepulciano: No. 

Well, where do I want to go if we go back to Italy:  Florence and Rome, obviously.  Venice, Ravenna, Verona, and Padua.  Maybe Milan and the Lake Como district.  (Inside joke alert...) Not the Dolomites. 

Favorite part of the trip:  Just being with the family during a weekend in Rome.  We walked ourselves ragged.  What a day.  Our calves and arms got buff, we got plenty of sun, and it was just great to be in the city Julia loves so much, being shown around.  If only the program were there instead of Monte-P.... We took plenty of pictures and saw a lot - a lot, really, in terms of the big picture.  I wish we could have got up to Ravenna or Venice, but it was nice to all be together, a little out of comfort zone.  And, no, our travel bug is not yet quenched.  Not remotely. 

Overall, it was a good experience.