I'm Loving it!

Ciao Everyone!
I apologize for not updating you on my status for such a long time. Between traveling, and classes, I've been losing track of time! I can't believe I have been here for 6 weeks already!

I'll start 4 weekends ago, when I went on a school run trip to Sienna and San Gimignano. They are two Medieval Tuscan cities. Sienna was a rival city with Florence and was actually taken over by Florence at one time. Sienna has a really cool city center with a sloped landscape of pavers. After seeing the city center, we went to their Duomo, which was originally planned to be bigger than the one in Florence, but the city ran out of money, so it is actually much smaller, but still beautiful!

There is a museum located where the Original entrance was supposed to be for the Duomo, which has a tower that overlooks the city and surrounding countryside. I think the stairs to get up to the top were probably 2 feet wide for 2-way traffic, so getting to the top was interesting, but so worth it! The views were breathtaking!

San Gimignano was really cool as well. It is much smaller than Sienna, but has a stronger medieval character than sienna, as a significant amount of it's towers still remain.

That same weekend, my friends and I went on an archaeological excursion to Naples, Herculaneum, Sorrento, and Pompei! We started out in Naples, where we had the best Pizza in the world, which can be found at the Pizzeria Michele. We found out about this place from the book "Eat, Pray, Love." And thanks to Rick Steves' directions, we were able to find it in a snap! I literally almost cried while I was eating this pizza, it was that good. But I have to say, as of right now, that is the only pizza I have found here that is better than Baba Louie's in Great Barrington!

Next up was Herculaneum, A town of ruins that was destroyed in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. The city was covered in volcanic ash for over 1,000 years before it was re-discovered and excavated. The ash helped to preserve these old buildings, which were in really good condition. Some didn't even look damaged at all! It was a really cool experience!

After Herculaneum, we went to Sorrento, a beautiful town on the Almalfi coast of Southern Italy. It was absolutely gorgeous! All around were these cliffs that rise up and out of the sea. I had never seen landforms that for so beautiful before! We all had our first hostel experiences in Sorrento as well, which waw pretty cool.

The next day, we went to Pompei, which was destroyed by the same volcanic eruption as Herculaneum in 79 AD. We had planned to climb Mt. Vesuvius, but it was closed due to weather conditions. We were bummed out but it cool because we were in POMPEI! It was a lot bigger than Herculaneum and had some really cool structures including an amphitheater and several gorgeous villas! It was awesome! The weekend was tiring, but we got to see so many things and it was so worth it!

The next weekend, I went on a field trip to Ceretto Guidi with my Architecture in Context class. Ceretto Guidi is a small city near Vinci (Where Leonardo di Vinci is from). It is mostly used as a passthrough town to get to Vinci and not much else. Our class was asked to develop proposals on improving the traffic flow of the city and making a better connection between the city center and beautiful surrounding countryside in order to give the town a new identity. It is a really cool project and I'm excited to be a part of it! We spent the whole weekend surveying the area, taking pictures, making obervations and interviewing the people of the town. It was intense, but a lot of fun!

Next up was probably the best weekend yet, OKTOBERFEST!!!! Oh my god, that was one of the highlights of my life! I had a BLAST at Oktoberfest! My friends and I went with this tour group called "Florence for Fun" We left on Friday night at Midnight, and arrived in Munich at 10am the next day. We walked into the festival and I had goosebumps! This rush of excitement came over me! It was so much bigger than I had ever imagined! During the weekend I met a so many cool people from all over the world, From Norway, to Chile, to Germany and more! The food was AMAZING! One of their highlights is roasted 1/2 chickens, and it was probably the best I have ever had in my life! And the beer, was OUT OF THIS WORLD! It was so good! The first day, we left the festival in the afternoon to explore around the city. We went to a cathedral, and we were able to climb up to the top, from which we were able to see the whole city and Oktoberfest! It was really cool!

The second day we spent the whole day at Oktoberfest! We actually got into some tents so that was pretty cool! The first day we weren't able to get in because there were so many people there. They actually had a record attendance of 1 million people the first day were were there! The ride home was interesting! We were supposed to leave at 5pm and get home around 1am, but of course there were people who were late for the bus, 2 HOURS to be exact! We didn't get home until 3:30am!!! It sucked because all of my friends and I had class at 9am that Monday morning, but it was so worth it!

Last weekend I needed a break from all the traveling, so I decided to stay in Florence, for the most part. I was able to catch up on some work and hang out with friends, whcih was really nice. On sunday, I did end up going to Cinque Terre with my friend Lauren. The Cinque Terre (five lands in Italian) are located on the coast of Northern Italy, and is the equivalent of a National park in the US. There are hiking trails that connect all five towns. The trails are all along the sea and offer breathtaking views of the surrounding landscape and the sea. It was gorgeous and a lot of fun!

This weekend I will be staying in Florence again to prepare for mid-term exams next week. Then after that is FALL BREAK! I will be Traveling to Greece for 5 days, making stops in Athens, Santorini and Crete. From there I fly to Ireland, where I will spend a night in Dublin and Galway. I'm meeting up with one of my friends from Roger Williams in Galway, and we are traveling together to Barcelona, Spain for the second weekend of break! I am so excited!

More good news! Mom and dad were able to change their trip, so they will be visiting me after break instead of Mid-Terms week! I'm so excited! Now I'll actually get to do thing with them while they are here!

Anyways, that is all for now! I miss you all and hope you enjoy reading about my adventures!

Ciao for now!

-Brian