Istanbul!

Many years ago, freshmen year, we were assigned our very first project in architecture. An analysis on a vast urban scale... the city of Istanbul, including all it's history... all these years later... we went!

Istanbul was a complex city... definitely not western, but not really eastern either. It's spot in between continents was apparent. We went to the Blue Mosque and stayed for a prayer services, sketched for hours in Hagia Sophia (one of the most beautiful buildings in the world), drank countless glasses of cay (tea) and sahlep (no way in the world to describe what it was, or how delicious it was... sort like a sweet yogurt drink, but not...), smoked hookah and hung out with a couple Canadians and a German chick at the hostel. Meet with some friends of a friend at their apartment and they made us dinner and then we went out on a party boat and got our discoteca on in the Bosporus. Took the ferry to the Asia side, so now I can say I've hit three continents!

And so we came back to Rome... we cooked, we talked, we worked, we walked around...

Meandering to Villa Borghese (my favorite place in all of Rome), exploring Villa Ada (another park farther behind... filled with families and children running around)...




My, my... look at all this interesting architecture...


Perhaps my favorite Roman activity... getting ready to leave studio, finding somebody to partner up with for dinner, running to the grocery store, going back, having a beer while we cook dinner, then a couple of glasses of wine with dinner, then a couple more glasses of wine after dinner, sitting in the kitchen for two hours, then the trek to the Spanish Steps or Piazza del Popolo, of Villa Borghese... 5 or 6 of us meandering through the streets of Rome... good times...




Can't tell you exactly what it was that we did in the days between Sicily and Istanbul, but I assure you... once or twice a week we did that...

So I could talk about Rome, and my work here and such, but let's be honest, why am I here? To travel!

And so, on our first travel weekend, the first chance we got, we went to Sicily. Poor time planning. The mountains of Sicily were still covered in snow and it was raining and wet. Besides that... it was amazing. I have never eaten better in my entire life. There were barely any tourists anywhere, and we stayed in the middle of the older section of the city. Palermo is one of Italy's larger cities, but it didn't feel that way. At the risk of sounding cliche, it just felt a lot more authentic. There were no restaurants trying to wrangle tourists in, no English in the street. It looking back it may have been my favorite trip we went on...

So we arrived in Palermo Friday morning. We meandered, stumbled upon Baroque sexual sculptural fountains, fell asleep in the Piazza of the Duomo, talked with a Carrabinieri (state police) for an hour in Italian/German (well, Colin did...), ate dinner in a guy's shed next to his wood shop in a room with one table and talked with him while he cooked the meal, and went to a "sangria party" at our hostel (a couple handles of vodka with a bottle of wine splashed in... bad news).
The next morning was a little rough as you might imagine. But we got on a train and went to Cefalu, a tiny town on the coast an hour outside of Palermo and spent the day walking around. I was able to fulfill my lifelong dream, driving a scooter! It was everything I could possibly have imagined.




And so it was Sunday, and our flight was that night... We took the bus up to Monreale, another small town on the side of the mountain overlooking Palermo, and continued to walk around. We saw a sign for woods and, intrigued by the prospect of nature and trees, walked in the direction it pointed. An hour later we decided to give up on that search as the street just kept going, but we did see some farms and beautiful vistas of the city.



And so we headed back down to catch our flight. We should have factored Italians dislike for general work into our plans. We got to the airport... and saw this...



... some sort of labor strike. And so, unexcited about the prospect of having to spend more money than we already didn't have on another night, we got in line to see about rescheduling our flight...


Twenty minutes later, we had a flight the next afternoon, a luxury hotel for the night with free food and a hot shower (which is rare in European hostel travelings), and another day in Sicily. Oh, and they were legally required to compensate us 20 euros, which is more than we spent on the entire trip... no biggie...And so we walked around for another day and found entirely new parts of Palermo that we hadn't seen before. And we finally did make it out that night, back to work and the test that we had missed and now had to make up. But, all of that work did happen to be in ROME, so we weren't too disappointed.

I don't know that I've eaten better in my entire life in one weekend. Connolis, arancine, Sicilian chocolate cake, street meat, fried sandwiches, gelato, kebab, indian food at the small place right outside our front door... we were engorged the entire weekend!


And so back we came, to do just a little bit of work, until Spring Break... and Istanbul!

Updates...

Okay... a month and a half later...

So I have allowed things to lapse a little. I don't think that anybody besides my mom and Virginia read this, and I update them regularly, but to anybody else that might glance upon this, here's a chance to find out what shenanigans I've been up to.

I don't believe I have said anything since my Northern Italy trip, so we have a lot of catching up to do. After a very frantic jury, we took off to the North... and it was cold... I don't know why I thought I wouldn't ever be cold in Italy, I guess I had romantic ideas of the warm Mediterranean. But there's a north to Italy too, and it's beautiful, but it decided that it hated us, and was going to rain/snow the entire time. But it didn't dampen the spirits (well... a little bit... there's only so much wet feet the body can take before the soul starts to get sad... my feet were wet and cold for a week).

So I'll address each city individually:
Florence
Might be my favorite city in the world. I can't really give you a specific reason, it just struck me right. If I may get mad architectural... the scale is absolutely beautiful (although later trips to Paris may give it a run for its money). Climbed the steps to the top of the Duomo and saw all of Florence and all the mountains and hill surrounding it. Never got to make it out to any of them, but I'll be taking the bus out to one of the towns in the hills that has a view of Florence down in the valley with Virginia in a few weeks. I had one of the absolute best meals of my life, with maybe the best steak I've ever had (sorry mom...), and wasn't all that expensive (relatively...) The nice thing about traveling this semester is all the hotels and travel are paid for, and we usually get either lunch or dinner out of it, and these are places that I never would have gone on my own. So Virginia, we're going and getting these steaks when we go to Florence. Mom, when I'm a big shot rich architect, I'll just have to take you to Tuscany one day. Or you can go with Dad, he'll be hesitant at first, but be very happy afterwards....

Bologna
We get off the train... and it's blizzarding. Florence had been cold, but I was not expecting snow at any point. Now, I did have my sweet European man scarf, but that can only do so much...

So we check out the main square, analyze the space, do our architectural thing. We are only there for the day, we took the train in from Florence that morning and were going to be in Venice that night. So after we did the architectural necessities (which we're all dorks and that's not something that you have to really force any of us to do), we had so free time. What to do? Why do up the medieval tower of course? But you think it was cold on the ground? We couldn't pass up the opportunity to throw a few snowballs down. And then the ideas started...

We got down to the base of the tower... and the epic snowball fight began. An hour later, with very damp clothes and supremely wet and cold feet, we ended it. I don't know if there are winners in snowball fights, but if you ask me, I definitely won...

Then walked around for an hour or so doing some sketching of the city. All the sidewalks are arcades with the buildings built over, providing protection from rain and snow, and shade in the summer. It was interesting, I don't know of any other place in the world that the entire city is like that. But, we had to make it back to the train. Onward to Venice!

Venice
So Venice is an island, with a causeway that links it to the mainland... and there were cruiseships docked as we came in... looked just like home...

Got to our hotel and did what we do in every city we go to, walked... for the next two days... we walked...

Venice is beautiful, but its almost not a real city. There's just a feel that not that many people actually live there, it's almost like a disney world. But we walked, the entire island, got lost, found out we were at the absolute farthest spot of the island that we could possibly be, walked more, took the boat bus (because their bus... is a boat...) saw one of the most beautiful churches I've ever seen (and it wasn't St. Marks, but a Palladio church on an smaller island that we took the "bus" to), ate the best kebab I've had (that includes all my travels in Italy and Istanbul).

Verona
This was the most architectural and dorky of our stops. It is a nice city, but there is really nothing to see in Verona if you aren't a loser architect. But... if you are...

This is where Palladio was from. Palladio! Designer of arguably the most beautiful buildings in the world, including Villa Rotunda. If there was one building in the world I would have wanted to have seen, it would be Villa Rotunda, and we almost didn't get it. Apparently it's closed that one day that we went, but Marina (our professor) worked her magic and smooth talked us in. It was everything I ever thought it would be... also snowing, but more properly bundled after a few days into the trip. Feet just as cold though, although jumping up and down with joy warms them up...

Other things learned in Verona: the very important difference between kebap and kebab (there is none), how wonderful euro stores can be (like a dollar store, but infinitely more amazing... you know how in a dollar store there's just shelves and shelves of crap you don't want... in a euro store there's shelves and shelves of crap that you never knew you needed... and its so cheap you can't afford not to buy it! I bought two pounds of dry muesli and ate breakfast for a week... all for a euro!), and how much one town can be entirely devoted to one historical figure that died 400 years ago... but let's give them credit... Palladio was a baller...

Milan
Before I came to Italy I read up a little bit and got the impression that Milan was the New York to Rome's DC. I was about right. Milan has many historical sites and history, but it's a modern city. The cultural and financial hub of Italy, its a modern city, and also the biggest city in Italy. And it felt like this. It felt a lot more cosmopolitan than any other city in Italy (probably because that's where all the money in Italy is, most definitely not in Sicily and the rest of the south).

So again, we walked. First night I went on an epic journey for kebab. Two hours later, I had seen a whole lot, and happened to stumble upon the Duomo and the Galleria, arguably the two most famous sites in Milan. So overall, not too bad.

But again... my poor feet... so cold.

Como
So one of the days in Milan we took a day trip out to a small city about a half hour away, Como. Sitting on a glacial lake at the foot of the Alps, Como is world famous for being beautifully nestled in between huge peaks and the beautiful lake. We got there and everything was grey, you couldn't see farther then 100 feet, and it was freezing rain. The entire reason the entire world knows Como, we missed, and got pissed on instead. But we did see an interesting piece of fascist architecture, so the losers we are, it was worth it... Although there was a contemporary building next to it that was even more interesting (personally, can't tell my professor that). Interesting new piece of architecture vs. famous old piece that informed architectural design and theory for years to come... toss up... learned from both though... so I think that wins.

And then home... only to travel on to Sicily... Istanbul... Paris... Amsterdam... Southern Italy... Spain... It's a rough life... but I suppose somebody has to do it...

More to follow...

Well... It's been a while since this guy got updated... My apologies to my ardent followers... The Italian lifestlye is not conducive to blogging... But let's see if we can't do some updates...

I last left you with a frantic last minute post pre-jury. Now that that is far behind me (and unfortunately the next jury looms on the not too distant horizon), life has resumed. Before jury I enjoyed a rather luxurious lifestyle, best summed up with to simple actions... to eat... and to walk. Rome is beautiful, scaled to the pedestrian, interesting, and WALK IS CHEAP! And then, you eat... I had expected sizable gastronomic expenses but not of the scale present. So tied to the action of eating... is the action of cooking. What is cheap to cook? Vegetables! Who would have expected such culinary talents (read talents as attempts...)! I suppose the Rodriguez blood runs strong! The Rodriguez's would be disappointed in the vegetable consumption and the drop in red meat... but what can be done... I'll clear the arteries out now and fill them back up at home...

Cooking, as always should be, is a family affair. Somebody chops the onions, somebody the potatoes, somebody boils the water... and so on. Some pretty banging dishes have been prepared. Check the potato, tomato, and mozzarella bake:

I also make a mean broccoli soup, baked eggplant and cheese, fritata... and more...

So, this was before jury killed all time... everything got fuzzy for a while... and then I came to and all of a sudden an urban analysis was done:

The picture doesn't want to load for me... I shall try and get it up.

No less than five minutes after I presented:

And after jury... Northern Italy! Posts to follow...

Blog Title

"L'appetito vien mangiando"

"Appetite comes with eating..."


The cycle... she's vicious...

The workload... she has built up...

Molto informazioni di la vida italiani to follow...