Sienna, Rome, Naples & Pompeii
Well, I'm back. The trip was spectacularly enlightening. Funny how a country so close to France can be so different.
From Florence I went to Sienna. Sienna is about and hour southwest of Florence (which is in the northwest). I had some stunning shots of the city from but proceeded to lose my camera in Rome :( so sorry guys, no pictures from Italy. But anyway, i'll get a new camera and i can use david's until then. Sienna is just what it sounds like, completely the color of sienna, and for those of you that don't know your crayola crayons...it's kind of a pale dusty brown. They have a very famous Duomo and you can climb to the top of the Facciatone (not really sure how to explain that one but anyway it's really high) and take pictures of the city. Sienna is really hilly, so the city dips up and down and up and down...when you're walking it's a neverending journey uphill and downhill. From the top of the Facciatone the hills textured the city which is filled with stereotypical italian houses/buildings all in sienna, narrow streets, and mountains in the background. Yeah, that view was worth it. To get to the top of the Facciatone, there is a single file spiral staircase...all the way up, there is no way to pass on the staircase; only room for people going one direction. People at the top would be yelling down the staircase like ok here we come and then all of a sudden you'd hear people yellingback...no sorry here we come. This was funny.
After Sienna, I travelled to Rome to meet David. Rome kind of screwed me over the minute i stepped off of the train. I walked around for awhile and then took the train to meet David at the airport who I missed by probably 10 minutes because no one would help me find the arrivals. The backup plan was to meet at the hostel if we missed eachother at the airport. Easier said than done. Rome is really big and my map didn't cover the area my hostel was in. So like an idiot I stopped at a little store, took one of their maps and wrote down some pretty vague directions of what to do after my map ended. HA! And then I walked and walked and walked....and got really lost. I walked right past the hostel like three times and couldn't for the life of me see it. In my defense, Rome is really poorly marked and way more confusing than the other areas i'd been too. Now I am an hour late for when we were planning on meeting and am about to ask this man at a gas station (or what they call a gas station) where the heck I was when I see David walk up the street. Whew! Rome is like Disneyland. There are tourists everywhere. It's really loud, really crowded, and really really dirty. But more on the dirt later. The sights were obviously stellar. The sistine chapel is worth the trip alone, along with the roman forum and colloseum. So much history.
We left Rome a little early...I wore David out trying to see too many things in too little time...and we went for some rest in naples which sits right on the mediterranean coast. Mostly Naples was a lot of sleeping and going out for nice leisurely walks by the sea and quiet dinners. We didn't do anything touristy in Naples but I did take a day to visit Pompeii. Pompeii is simply vast. It's the size of a small city and i took the "short tour" which was 3 hours. It's filled with the ruins of the ancient city of Pompeii which was instantly destroyed in 79 AD when Vesuvius erupted and buried it. Eventually excavators came upon the city and dug it out of the ash. It revealed an entirely preserved city...inhabitants and all. After the bodies of the people naturally decomposed, there were empty cavities left in the cooled lava. One particularly smart excavator realized this and began filling the cavities with plaster, which ultimately revealed a human form. Not just a human form either. You can tell what these people looked like, and even more disturbing the horror on their faces. It still dumbfounding to me that we were able to dig out the city and damage so little. There really isn't an trace of an eruption...it just looks like ruins from an old city.
So that's it. Back in Lyon. I need to get some sleep so i'll finish this up tomorrow. Bonnuit.
From Florence I went to Sienna. Sienna is about and hour southwest of Florence (which is in the northwest). I had some stunning shots of the city from but proceeded to lose my camera in Rome :( so sorry guys, no pictures from Italy. But anyway, i'll get a new camera and i can use david's until then. Sienna is just what it sounds like, completely the color of sienna, and for those of you that don't know your crayola crayons...it's kind of a pale dusty brown. They have a very famous Duomo and you can climb to the top of the Facciatone (not really sure how to explain that one but anyway it's really high) and take pictures of the city. Sienna is really hilly, so the city dips up and down and up and down...when you're walking it's a neverending journey uphill and downhill. From the top of the Facciatone the hills textured the city which is filled with stereotypical italian houses/buildings all in sienna, narrow streets, and mountains in the background. Yeah, that view was worth it. To get to the top of the Facciatone, there is a single file spiral staircase...all the way up, there is no way to pass on the staircase; only room for people going one direction. People at the top would be yelling down the staircase like ok here we come and then all of a sudden you'd hear people yellingback...no sorry here we come. This was funny.
After Sienna, I travelled to Rome to meet David. Rome kind of screwed me over the minute i stepped off of the train. I walked around for awhile and then took the train to meet David at the airport who I missed by probably 10 minutes because no one would help me find the arrivals. The backup plan was to meet at the hostel if we missed eachother at the airport. Easier said than done. Rome is really big and my map didn't cover the area my hostel was in. So like an idiot I stopped at a little store, took one of their maps and wrote down some pretty vague directions of what to do after my map ended. HA! And then I walked and walked and walked....and got really lost. I walked right past the hostel like three times and couldn't for the life of me see it. In my defense, Rome is really poorly marked and way more confusing than the other areas i'd been too. Now I am an hour late for when we were planning on meeting and am about to ask this man at a gas station (or what they call a gas station) where the heck I was when I see David walk up the street. Whew! Rome is like Disneyland. There are tourists everywhere. It's really loud, really crowded, and really really dirty. But more on the dirt later. The sights were obviously stellar. The sistine chapel is worth the trip alone, along with the roman forum and colloseum. So much history.
We left Rome a little early...I wore David out trying to see too many things in too little time...and we went for some rest in naples which sits right on the mediterranean coast. Mostly Naples was a lot of sleeping and going out for nice leisurely walks by the sea and quiet dinners. We didn't do anything touristy in Naples but I did take a day to visit Pompeii. Pompeii is simply vast. It's the size of a small city and i took the "short tour" which was 3 hours. It's filled with the ruins of the ancient city of Pompeii which was instantly destroyed in 79 AD when Vesuvius erupted and buried it. Eventually excavators came upon the city and dug it out of the ash. It revealed an entirely preserved city...inhabitants and all. After the bodies of the people naturally decomposed, there were empty cavities left in the cooled lava. One particularly smart excavator realized this and began filling the cavities with plaster, which ultimately revealed a human form. Not just a human form either. You can tell what these people looked like, and even more disturbing the horror on their faces. It still dumbfounding to me that we were able to dig out the city and damage so little. There really isn't an trace of an eruption...it just looks like ruins from an old city.
So that's it. Back in Lyon. I need to get some sleep so i'll finish this up tomorrow. Bonnuit.
posted by Jenn at
10:03 PM
4 Comments:
Hi Jenn!!
just wanted to let you know that my roommate (Straw) is playing in Paris 10/29 and 10/31. 10/29 is at a venue called Kitch'up. 10/31 is at a venue named Cafe de la Plage. I think it would blow his mind if you showed up! Continued good travels to you. If I was in France I would take you out to le Red Lobstre...
------Jay
Jenn are you getting a job in france?Dad and todd said you are.
Jenn call your mom
~your cousin
Yeah, so you guys just aren't quite getting the point of anonymous are you?
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home