Napoli & Pompeii, with a sprinkle of Sorrento

After wrapping things up in Cuneo last Thursday, arriving back in Alba, grabbing a quick bite to eat & jetting off to the bus stop, we were on our way to Naples for the weekend! Getting there involved a lurching & nauseating 1-hour stick-shift bus ride, a 10-hour train trip that could be likened to a fidgety slumber party in Korinne's bathroom (lol :P), a couple stops on the Napolitan metro, and a 3-minute walk to our hostel.

Stepping out of the metro and onto the streets of Naples, this was my first impression: Naples is dirty...

On the way to our hostel.. see the pile of trash on the side of the street?

So I definitely don't want to give Naples a bad rep or anything, but I honestly was kind of disappointed by it. Don't get me wrong, I had a pretty fun weekend, but it wasn't outstanding, and I wouldn't rave about it as a place one must absolutely go to. I guess I just had higher expectations for it b/c several friends of mine who had been there had told me that I should visit it and were super excited about me going. It's okay though, I still got to see another part of Italy :) I'm also glad to be able to say that although Naples is apparently famous for pickpocketers, my friends and I (six girls altogether) made it thru a long weekend in the Naples area without getting pickpocketed, even with the amount of time that we spent on the somewhat sketchy metro. :]

We arrived in Naples around 9 Friday morning. We asked around at the tourist information office about how to get to the places we planned to go during the weekend (Sorrento, Pompeii, Archeological Museum) and were told that this particular weekend, all national museums were free. Sweet! Not sure what the occasion was, but it was a pretty sweet deal. We bought a day pass for the metro and made our way over to our hostel, which was actually really nice. I've never stayed at a hostel before, so I wasn't really sure what to expect. The difference between a hostel and a hotel is that at a hotel, you pay for the room per night, but at a hostel you pay for a bed each night, so you could end up with roommates that are complete strangers. This one was nice though, it had colorful walls, our room was spacious, and it was a youth hostel, so the other guests were all teens/college age kids like us. We had an 8-person room with four bunk beds; since there were 6 of us in our group, there were only 2 people that we didn't know in our room, and we didn't really meet them because they came in to sleep after we had already turned in for the night.

The entrance to our hostel. The gate that could only be opened by the people at the front desk buzzing you in was a comfort and made us feel safe staying there.

One side of our hostel room; mine's the top bunk :)

After dropping our stuff off at the hostel & locking our stuff in the room lockers (can't ever be too cautious), we headed out again to get food. By this point, it was somehow already 1 or 2 in the afternoon, and we were starved. Our last meal had been around 9pm the previous night, who could blame us? After making our way back to Central Station, we found our solution. This became my first meal in Naples:

Don't judge - it was delicious!

With our bellies satisfied and happy, we were finally ready to explore. The original plan was to go to Sorrento, another city about an hour & ten minutes' train ride from Naples. However, with the rainy weather and it already being later in the afternoon, we were advised against it by the people at the tourist office and the people at the hostel front desk. The guy at the front desk pointed out a couple streets, one a more cultural one that had a castle, and the other one for shopping. We left for our exploration of Naples, heading toward Castel S. Elmo first.

On the way up to the castle, Julianna spotted this cameo factory store, a family-run business. We ended up spending probably about an hour and a half to two hours total here. :P

This is me with Renato, one of the elderly men who ran the store. They were sooo nice! They gave us a free sample of the carved cameos, & they also spoke really good English, which was cool :)

This is his brother (I think?) showing us how they carve the shells into jewelry and such.

Some of their jewelry on display - they were sooo gorgeous!

Another thing on display - they were so incredibly detailed!

This is Castel S. Elmo, but we decided not to go inside because there was a 5 euro entrance fee. We started to head back, but then the old guys at the cameo store told us to head down to the piazza at the end of the hill, where there was quite a view...

...& they were so right!

I'm pretty sure that's Mt. Vesuvius in the background - pretty awesome, right?

Another makeshift panoramic view

So wandering around Naples was pretty cool and fun. Apparently Naples is supposed to have the best pizza in Italy, so I had me some Margherita Pizza (basically a cheese pizza) for dinner, and it was quite delicious :)

On Saturday we hit up Pompeii; most of my pictures from the weekend are actually from Pompeii, so I'm prolly just going to put that in a separate post, especially since this one's already so long, haha.

Sunday we got a semi-early start and went to the Archeological Museum in Naples. Didn't wander too long around there, but we did see a bunch of marble statues, as well as artifacts and such from Pompeii. 

Museo Archeologico in Naples

My favorite room in the museum. The ceiling was covered in more of those paintings that make it look like they're 3-D, but they're just paint! It's amazing.

Aerial view of Pompeii.. apparently we only covered about 1/3 of it during our Saturday there!

Plastic model of Pompeii

After the museum we finally made our way over to Sorrento. We only got 2 1/2 hours there, but we definitely enjoyed it. It seemed like a nice, clean, quaint town/city with flea market type shopping that the rest of the girls particularly enjoyed. I managed to make it through the day without buying anything, but that's because I had already bought a purse and jacket back in Naples. I tried doing some souvenir shopping in Sorrento but didn't really find anything.. that's okay, though, since we still have another two months here :)

View of the sea from Sorrento [photo pickpocketed from Korinne]

The quaint town/city of Sorrento

Coming Soon...

Pictures from Pompeii

Tuesday's visit to the Cavallotto Vineyard & Barolo Wine Museum

Picture Post: Cuneo

Last Wednesday and Thursday we spent the whole day in Cuneo, a city about an hour away from Alba. It was for the Summer School in Cuneo; basically we had two 3-hour sessions of lectures & debate about religion and politics. That part of our time in Cuneo wasn't so interesting, but the second day we got a full 3 hours for lunch and exploring the city, which was awesome b/c it was a gorgeous day and the city is beautiful. :)

Outlines of the Alps!

A pretty church that Lilian and I stepped into

Pictures & updates from the weekend in Naples, Pompei, & Sorrento coming soon... :)

Week 3

So it's only Wednesday, mid-Week 3, but I feel like I can already say that this week has gone by pretty fast. Tomorrow is Thursday, which starts the weekend! Unfortunately this particular weekend isn't  starting until sometime between 7 & 8pm tomorrow night, but I can tell you right now that it's going to be one heck of a weekend :]

Today and tomorrow's schedule involves the Summer School in Cuneo, which I talked about in an earlier blog. All I'm going to say is that it was looooong. This was the thing that we had a 3 hour "introduction" for last week. So. Right now what stands between me and the weekend is a 1 hour bus ride, 3 hours of lecture/debate about religion/politics/human rights, 2.5-3 hours of lunch/exploring Cuneo, another 3 hours of lecture/debate about religion/politics/human rights, another 1 hour bus ride, and then 1-1.5 hours of getting dinner & making any final last-minute preparations.

Then it's off to Naples!

I'll be joining Chelsea, Cathlin, Korinne, Laura B., and Julianna on this weekend trip starting from Thursday (tomorrow) night until Monday morning. We definitely want to visit Pompeii and would like to go to Capri as well. I'm so excited!! This is my first real trip during my semester abroad, and it should be loads of fun. These (+ Flora) are the girls that went to Cinque Terre last weekend, so they have a bit of a handle on how the transportation (bus + trains) & hostel stuff works, which is good, so hopefully everything will go smoothly.

Surprisingly, upcoming weekend schedules are already filling up, too! I didn't realize it until Chelsea pointed it out yesterday. Here's what the next month and a half or so is looking like:

Weekend of...

Sept 24 (this weekend): Naples

Oct 3: Donkey Race (This is going to be awesome.. more blogging on that later :P)

Oct 10: possibly Florence

Oct 17: Cinque Terre, since the girls that went raved and said this was a must-go

Oct 24: Rome w/ Chelsea to meet up with her parentals who will be visiting :]

Oct 29 - Nov 7: Fall Break! I'm hoping to have a visitor or two.. no certainties about that yet, but I can dream! :)

After that, there are only 5 more weekends left before we leave Italia and wrap up the semester! Other places on the travel list include Venice, Pisa, shopping in Milan, and it would be pretty neat to go to other countries, too, like France or Spain. We'll see, we'll see! 

Note: This semester still doesn't feel like a study abroad program. Aren't I still on vacation? If only, haha. :P

Ferrero!

So, for today, our Alba Academic Calendar says "Sept 21: Seminar on Beppe Fenoglio at Fondazione Ferrero, 09:00 - 12:30." All I took from that was the word FERRERO, which then translated to CHOCOLATE :D

Unfortunately, as we were notified yesterday, this did not mean we were going to the Ferrero chocolate factory. Lame, lame.

So this morning we trudged past the chocolate factory with the scent of baking chocolate floating in the slight breeze, teasing our noses and appetites, and went to the Fondazione Ferrero, or the Ferrero Foundation, one building over. They told us that the Ferrero Foundation supports the elderly that worked at the Ferrero factory for at least 25 years, but it is also open to the community. We were there to learn about Beppe Fenoglio, an Italian writer, and we watched a movie called Il partigiano Johnny (Johnny the Partisan), which was really long, but not the worst thing in the world to sit through.

Thankfully, we got an "intermission" a little more than halfway through the movie, and they had drinks & snacks for us! There was one box of Ferrero Rocher chocolates (some of my favorite chocolates ever!) and then two boxes of Kinder Bueno, which I've never had before, but they were gooood. They were kind of like Kit Kats meets Twix filled with love and amazingness (according to Craig :P). They were quite delicious. Two whole boxes of those, and they didn't all disappear at once surprisingly, sooo I kept stashing one or two away the longer they sat there. :P Let it be noted, though, that I did not take the last one. James picked up the last two and I think gave one to Elizabeth and the other to me. Sooo that's how I ended up with five Kinder Buenos and one pack of Ferrero Rochers. :) They also had extra bottles of EstaThe, which was sort of a peach tea (sooo good), so when Dan said we could take them if we wanted some, I naturally helped myself. :P

I looove me some free stuff :]

Shopping at the Market!

So this morning was the Saturday market again, and I was pretty excited for it now that I had an idea of what was out there and what the prices are like from last week. I left the house around 9am and backtracked a little bit to get to the end of the stalls on Via Maestra, and I didn't even make it to the end of this main street before I had to come back to the apartment to drop off all the stuff I had bought!

I haven't been in too much of a shopping mood in the last two weeks or so that I've been here, but it must've hit me this morning, because I found quite a bit. I came across several 5 euro racks of clothing, which is definitely reasonable compared to other prices. All in all, I spent 88.08 euro today.. quite a bit, I know, definitely the most I've ever spent in one outing so far here, but it was just as if I went to the mall, haha. My loot included two scarves, two cute floral dresses, a shirt for Mom (you have to wait to see it til December, Mom! I hope you like it :] ), a sweater dress with a belt, a long black cardigan, and a pair of pretty comfy & cute grey boots. I also finally wandered around the food section of the market, where I got four peaches for 0.50 eurocents, as well as a small rotisserie chicken and french fries for just 6.08 euro! I had some of that for lunch, shared some with Charlotte, and there's still plenty more for another meal (most likely dinner tonight).

Yum!

Week 2

So I haven't posted much this week, I know, and the reason for that isn't that I've been super busy like last week, but that this week just hasn't been as exciting. Last week they had us running around on a schedule (group lunch at noon, group dinner at 8, various meetings throughout the day, a couple tours) so there was a lot of hanging out, going out at night, and exploring and reveling in the newness of things.

This week, we started classes. With class descriptions like Film in Italy, Images in Christianity, and Italian Pop Music: 1950s to Present and its American Influence, as well as Elementary Italian Language, you'd think that these would be fairly easy and fun, right? Weeell, not exactly. We've only started the Music in History and Italian Language courses, both of which are taught by Italian professor Dino Bosco. Dino seems like a really nice guy, but he has a pretty deep voice and a kind of heavy accent that makes it hard to understand him sometimes.

In the Music course, he doesn't really follow any sort of logical way of lecturing; he seems to be more just winging it and having a conversation than teaching, so it makes it really difficult to figure out what to take notes on and what he expects from us in this class. All we've done so far pretty much is talk about what music we like, listen to some songs from YouTube on his computer (country & bluegrass on Day 1, regional Italian music on Day 2) and then discuss what we think about them. As far as I know, there aren't any tests or such in this class - grading is just on participation, behavior, and then 50% of our grade is on a final paper that we haven't really heard anything about. There also isn't a set schedule for this class for the semester; this week we had it on Mon & Wed from 10am to noon, but my impression is that that will vary week by week until we fulfill the number of hours required for a 4-credit class. It's an interesting (and I will say seemingly inefficient) system. We thankfully got the schedule for the rest of the semester for our other classes and some other local visits they have planned for us, but there still seem to be a couple holes. For example, it seems that all of our group trips are only to local places; I was under the impression that we'd get at least one big trip to a city like Rome or something like that.. one of the other girls said that they went to Florence a previous semester, so if they don't take us someplace further like that, I think that will be seriously unfair. Guess we'll have to see, I'm gonna ask our RA about it next time I see him.

Italian I've actually been enjoying so far, Dino teaches it at a rather fast pace, but I'm managing fine so far because the structure is similar to Spanish. If I hadn't ever taken a language class before though, I would be sooo entirely lost. So even though he hasn't lost me (yet), I'm definitely going to have to do some studying up on this. He hasn't assigned us any homework or anything like that, it's all personal study methods that's going to get us through this course, so I'm going to need to get some kind of routine down and make sure I'm not slacking.

We also met Professor Lingua yesterday, who will be our professor for the religions class. He met with us yesterday to give us an "introduction" to what we'll be doing next week, which is attending the Summer School in Cuneo at the University of Turin for two of the four or five days that it goes for. It basically seems to me kind of like a political science meets religion conference, with lectures by various professors and grad students from everywhere. He basically lectured for three hours yesterday on what we're going to be lectured on next week. Granted, it does seem like an interesting subject (all of the sessions/lectures will be discussing the role of religion in the contemporary public sphere), but it still definitely isn't going to be the most exciting thing in the world.. if three hours was just an "introduction," I'm not sure I can handle what we're gonna be doing next week. I don't really know what to expect.. I think the lectures may be in Italian, and then they'll have to translate them into English for us, so it may take twice as long and my attention span may end up being twice as short (just like a museum tour we took earlier this week where the museum lady only knew Italian, and then Dan, our RA, and Dino had to translate afterwards, turning it into a two and a half hour tour). Sooo we'll see how that goes next week, too.

Despite the not-so-exciting classes thus far, I still love being here. I was hanging out on our kitchen terrace the other day, just taking in the view of red rooftops, clock towers, hearing random Italian chatter in the distance, and it started to finally sink in that I'm actually here. I'm in Italy, and not just for vacation (although that's what it felt like last week, which made this week's classes that much harder to sit through) - I'm here for another three months. I get to see these red rooftops, walk these cobblestone streets, smell the chocolate from Ferrero, and laugh at the unsynchronized clock bells for quite a while longer. That's kind of awesome. :)

Since classes go only Monday through Thursday, yesterday started the weekend for me, which I could definitely get used to. While a couple groups of people are already going out on personal travel - Chelsea and the San Rocco girls are checking out Cinque Terre and three of my housemates, Nikki, Elizabeth, and Sarah, plus Andrew S. & James are headed off to Lake Maggiore - I'm just planning to have a relaxing weekend here in Alba. I could've gone with the latter group to Lake Maggiore, but it was really last-minute planning, and I'm not ready to be that spontaneous. I plan on going to the market again tomorrow morning and will probably attempt to get some studying for Italian in as well. I'm boring, I know, haha, but I'm content that way. I still have three more months to get out there - for now, I'm gonna spend some time in my new home.

Picture Post: La Cittá di Alba

This is the map of Alba they gave us. It served as my best friend all last week and still accompanies me everywhere I go, just in case. As you can see, the city of Alba is pretty much one big circle. All the inner streets that we wander about are cobblestone, while along the outside perimeter you'll see more actual roads, painted lanes, and roundabouts. The cars here are just as crazy on the roads as they are on cobblestone. It's pretty ridiculous and rather nervewracking.

Here are some pictures I took around Alba from the guided tour we took last Tues (Sept 8), which mostly consisted of several old churches, and from our own individual exploring that we did this past Sunday because we had a free day :)



Piazza Duomo (the plaza in front of the cathedral)



Inside the Duomo, where a few of us went to church this past Sunday

Side chapel of the Duomo

Ceiling of the side chapel

Inside another smaller church. Most of that back wall is just painted on to look real and give perspective.. Can you tell?

Front view from the boys' apartment

Back view from the kitchen terrace of the boys' apartment

There are a lot of clock towers around Alba. They chime all the time, and not in sync either, but I've already grown used to them. They're actually somewhat comforting :)

Cinema just a block or two over from our apartment.. gonna have to check it out sometime, try to use it as a resource for learning Italian :P

The archway decor is another painting made to look real. These are so neat!

Pizzeria La Duchessa, my favorite restaurant so far :)

I believe that's the Ferrero factory in the distance, where the yummy chocolatey smells keep coming from.. :)

On the road that we take every day to the Campus Center (I believe it's called Via Paruzza but am too lazy to double check right now)

St. Mary's College of Maryland in Alba - this is our Campus Center, the building that all of our classes and meetings are in

Another experimental macro shot of a hanging plant :)

Cobblestone - definitely not my feet's best friend, but certainly characteristic of Italy (maybe Europe in general? I still have yet to find out)

Our street, Via Mazzini

Of course, nothing compares to actually being here, but maybe now you have a slightly better idea of the place that I am blessed to call home for the next three months. :)