I can't complain, I'm in Italy!

Vicenza and Verona- September 16th-18th, 2011

The next day we headed to Vicenza. We had a chartered bus for class which took us around to see the sites. We were following an architectural trail throughout the region, visiting different important sites by architects of the area (mainly Palladio and Carlo Scarpa). We started at a Gipsoteca museum in Possagno, Italy (on our way to Vicenza) which was home to Antonio Canova who was a famous sculptor. A gipsoteca is a museum that houses plaster casts and rough models of what later would become sculptures. This was cool to see how these sculptures were created and the tactics the artists used to keep the proportions right throughout the sculptures.

After this museum we went to Brion Cemetery which was completely designed by Scarpa. At first I was thinking we are visiting a cemetery? It ended up being really neat, with interesting buildings and more importantly interesting details and lighting of the buildings. Unfortunately I could only appreciate the building and landscape for so long before the onslaught of mosquitos began. Luckily we were only there for a few more minutes before heading to lunch. For lunch we ate at a pizzeria which was basically in the middle of nowhere… as much as I enjoyed the pizza here, the prices of the pizza were better. After being in Vienna and Venice for 6 days, a 5 euro pizza was great compared to the 10 euro pizzas which didn’t taste as good!

images from Brion Cemetery

a cool plant I found in Brion Cemetery

After lunch we visited two Palladian villas. The first villa we visited is owned by a couple from Atlanta who happened to be there at the time, so the wife showed us around the house which was neat. Once again, there was an absurd amount of mosquitos in the area. The second villa has been in a family forever, and they still live there as well, so the son of the couple who owns it now took us around. Here, there was a fish pond in the back yard which attracted what seemed like millions of (you guessed it) mosquitos. At one point I looked down at my legs and saw 5 mosquitos on one of them. Anyway, I was at a Palladian villa in Italy so I couldn’t complain. Anyways, I can’t begin to imagine what it would be like to own a historical Palladian villa in Italy. That night we stayed in Vicenza which is full of more Palladian work! (I was a little Palladio-ed out but the end of these few days). I counted my mosquito bites before I went to bed…I got to 57 before I gave up. But as a few of us began saying, "we can't complain, we are in Italy!"
Tomorrow we were off to the Villa Rotunda and a tour of Vicenza.

second Palladian villa we visited

the pond where I recieved most of my mosquito bites

The Villa Rotunda(yet another Palladian villa) was cool to see since it was something I studied in school, however I was not overly impressed with it. It might be a result of seeing nearly 10 Palladian buildings on this trip before this one! Later that day we had a tour around Vicenza to see even more Palladian palaces! I won’t go into details, but I have now seen A LOT of Andrea Palladio’s work! That night we headed to Verona,Italy (where Romeo and Juliet are said to be from).

Villa Rotunda

I am pretty sure the main reason we went to Verona was so that our Brazilian professor could go to this Brazilian steakhouse that he raves about. I didn’t go because it would cost 30 euros+, but apparently it was amazing and I wish I could have gone! I had Italian instead. After staying in Verona for the night, we began our last day on this trip, which was by far the most relaxed day of the entire week, and the only rainy day we have had since being in Itlay. We just visited the Verona coliseum in the morning, and then we went to Castelvecchio, which is an old medieval castle/museum with modifications made by Carlo Scarpa. It was actually really cool to see how the modern touches connected with the old medieval aspects of the building. We were done with those two things by noon, so we had the rest of the day to get lunch, shop and explore before finally heading back to Genoa at 5.

view of Verona from the Colliseum

view of Verona from Castelvecchio

The train ride home was a little chaotic at first. Every once in a while, trains will go on strike and they just won’t show up at the station when they are supposed to. This happened with our first train to Milan. Luckily, there was another train going to Milan, and just as we realized our train wasn’t coming the other train pulled in. So we booked it through the crowd down the stairs and back up again to hop on the new train before it pulled away. Apparently many other people had this idea as well since the one train was on strike, so this new train was soooooo crowded I could barely move. After standing in the hallway of this train for an hour and a half we made it to Milan where we had plenty of time to get to our much more comfortable, reserved train back to Genoa. As much fun as I had on this first trip, I was very glad to be back!