AmsterDAYUM!

People live in that boat, true story.

Friday morning I awoke at the early hours of 4:30 to get myself ready for a trip to Amsterdam. I wouldn’t say I as much woke up as I popped out of bed in eager excitement for the weekend to come.  The airport was empty when I arrived and strolled through the security check.  Of course I forgot to empty out my re-useable water bottle and instead of being able to pour it out, I was forced to chug the water.  It was totally full but college has done me good and I powered through it, the last drip went down my throat and I was off to the gate. 

I've been working on manual settings on my camera and I'm gettin' pretty good!

After a layover in Munich, my plane set off for Amsterdam.  I tried to sleep as I did on the flight to Munich but my excitement was far to great to allow me that pleasure.  Instead, I chose to read a few short stories from the book, “The Elephant Vanishes,” until we landed.  When the flight attendant came over the loudspeaker announcing our landing, the anticipation on the plane was so great, I swear I felt a pressure change that could have ruptured the entire passenger cabin.  The second our plane landed and came to a slow taxi I heard the unclicking of seatbelts and people immediately began retrieving their bags from the overhead compartment.  This is before the seatbelt light even went off, people.  I had never seen anything quite like it in my life, but the feeling was contagious! All of a sudden, I started getting jittery with excitement and continuously asked myself when I would get off of the airplane! No matter how quick it took, it was not quick enough, that I know. 

But the benches and the brick match!?!

To get to from the airport to Amsterdam Central Station, I had to take a 15-minute train ride.  The anticipation was burning inside me, making my blood boil and my knees bounce.  But alas, I got to the station with no pick-pocketing or trouble.  Now all I had to do was find Alexa and Sam to get this party started.  This proved the most difficult leg of the trip.  Relying solely on BBM makes describing places and finding people nearly impossible.  Sam told me to walk outside and when I did I found no Sam even though he claimed to be there.  For nearly 20 minutes I was walking up and down and over through the train station contemplating giving up and staying in the station for the remainder of the weekend.  By some miracle, I found another outside entrance, opposite the side I arrived on, and lo and behold I saw the most wonderful sight in the world.  One of my dearest friend’s face peered from around a light pole.  Immediately Alexa ran and we embraced each other in the sort of movie-cliché reunion that makes you want to throw up it’s so cute.  Well friends, grab the puke bucket, because we are that cute. 

Sam led us back to the hotel – on a side note, I would have been lost in Amsterdam forever if Sam Hamburger did not exist – where I set my bags down and then set off for the city. The first thing I noticed was how interesting the buildings of Amsterdam were.  Built along the maze of canals, these narrow brick buildings really struck me for some reason.  Each one seemed to have a bit of different character about it even though the façades between the buildings differed only ever so slightly.

Our first stop for the day was Anne Frank’s House, Prinsengracht 267.  We somehow arrived at the perfect time, encountering no line or wait at all to enter.  When you set foot into the house you are immediately overcome with a somber feeling.  Once upon a time, a family walked along these floors and lived a regular life.  And once upon a time, that right was wrongfully revoked and the family was forced to live in fear and silence in a secret annex.  As you walk through the museum, diary quotes line the walls and video/audio recordings tell the story of the Franks, Van Peels, and Fritz Pfieffer struggles during Nazi persecution.  What I enjoyed about this museum is the humanity that seeing the rooms brings to the story told in Anne’s diary.  Sunday school has told me the story multiple times but to see the exact places where important events occurred and to imagine the family makes the story all the more real and tragic.

To bring our moods up, Sam, Alexa, and I decided to walk around town and check out the beautiful scenery around the city.  Since Sam and Alexa had been there for four days already, they knew a lot of interesting places to see and were more than happy to show me around.  With every street Sam took me down, I could have sworn we were walking down the same street as before.  The canals that flow through the city don’t allow you any landmarks to be able to distinguish one from another and to be frank, it’s just embarrassing to try to say street names like “Blauwburgal”. 

I soon met up with Nikki, Liv, Schulman, Larg, and their friend Sofia to go hang out at a coffeeshop and catch up since I haven’t seen them since leaving for abroad and it felt just like home to see their beautiful faces.  We sat and swapped stories of our semesters so far and soon parted for bed knowing tomorrow would start early in order to get a full day of Amsterdam in.

My cute friends

Magical...

Around 10 o’clock, Nikki and I woke up to get ready for the day.  I met up with Sam and Alexa and we headed over to Pancakes! to get some, yes you guessed it, pancakes.  We ordered a piece of apple cake to start the day off and then each ordered a pancake.  Mine came with goat cheese, sautéed spinach, pine nuts, salad pits (whatever those are), and drizzled in garlic oil.  My oh my this pancake was something else.  The Dutch REALLY know how to make a pancake.  This pancake was a wonderful light, thin canvas for the toppings.  If pancakes had academy awards, this bad boy would’ve won Best Supporting Role in a Meal.  Alexa even exclaimed at one point that it was the single best thing she had ever eaten.  Just to give you an idea…

We then headed out for the Van Gogh Museum.  I was super amped to see this because Van Gogh has been a favorite of mine since learning about him in middle school.  The museum is the largest collection of Van Goghs in the world with over 200 paintings.  The museum is broken into time periods of Vincent Van Gogh’s life, which allows you the ability to see him, progress as a painter, but also as a person.  Letters to Vincent’s brother Theo are painted on the walls, which open a window into his emotional states at particular moments in his life while the painting descriptions explain not only the painting but also his feelings about them.  The museum is wonderfully done in that you’re able to make a genuine connection with the paintings before you and I find that extremely rare since majority of the time I look at a painting I only see it for what it is a point blank rather than its meaning and motivations. The saddest part of Vincent’s life is that he was never appreciated for his paintings until after his death, so he died feeling worthless.  In a field, Vincent shot himself in the chest with a revolver and died two days later in a hospital.  His last words were, “the sadness will last forever.”  If only he had known how marvelous his talents were, how unique his style was, and how loved he is today.  The way Van Gogh paints is even more beautiful than photos of his works show.  His paintbrush leaves raised short strokes and the colors that he uses are so bright and colorful (in most paintings, though there are exceptions) yet so simple.  The shading on one of his self-portraits is done only in yellow and red strokes, no blending or smearing at all.  Just one color but a whole lotta dimension.  My trip here was the best part of the weekend for me and I say it is a MUST if you ever find yourself in Amsterdam. My favorite paintings housed inside are: Sunflowers, A Pair of Leather Clogs, The Potato Eaters, Skull of a Skeleton with a Burning Cigarette, Almond Blossom, Pieta, Wheatfield with Crows (the last before his death), A Pair of Shoes, a self portrait done, and Landscape at Twilight. I could stare at his works forever and not once would my eyes tire. 

I will live above that elephant one day.

To start the night off, we headed to a nearby bar to have a Heineken freshly brewed in Amsterdam.  On our way we heard a street performer singing “Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman so we stopped to listen…that is until the smell of the public urinals became too awful.  It’s weird that they have that and American finally has one hand up on Europe. Congrats, it’s the only one you’ll be getting.  I like Heinekens, but I love Heinekens in Amsterdam.  Either it was the extreme dry mouth I had from not drinking all day or that Heineken really was a better thirst quencher than lemon-lime Gatorade after four days in the desert.

maybe the prettiest picture i've ever taken?

I went back to the hotel to take a quick shower and meet up with Nikki then the four of us went to go get dinner.  We tried a Tibetan restaurant called Snow Lion since none of us had ever had Tibetan food.  The only patrons in the restaurant left 5 minutes after we had sat down, leaving us in an extremely intimate setting.  I didn’t mind it at all, it was quite peaceful.  The menu was entirely vegetarian with a small “Non-Vegetarian Section,” which I found to be really cool.  I love vegetarian food and sometimes the meat consumption in Florence is too much to handle, so this was a nice break from the pattern.  We ordered spinach and goat cheese Momo (which were AMAZING!), a fennel and potato slaw, stir fried vegetables (one with tofu and one spicy without), and a super good vegetable dumpling soup.  Snow Lion, you truly made a fan of Tibetan food out of me.  I love your people and I love your food.

When the morning came, sorrow followed – why did I have to leave this wonderful city of arts and food? To make my morning brighter, Sam, Alexa, Nikki and I went to Barney’s Uptown for breakfast.  Here you can get the yummiest breakfast foods your heart can dream of – giant bagels, pancake roulades, omelettes, sandwiches, mimosas, anything.  I set my sights high and went with a pancake roulade with scrambled eggs inside topped with melted cheese and bacon.  A wonderful choice I must add.

And then it was off to the dreaded airport for my departure.  The trip had ended and my journey back to Florence has just begun.

When in Rome!

Ahhhh it has been too long friends and family.  Sorry for the delay, we’ve got a lot of catching up to do and I can think of no better way than telling you about my trip to Rome with my Great Masters Art History Class. 

Building Facade of Galleria Borghese

The class and I left for Rome at 7 in the morning and arrived around 11:30 just in time for lunch.  We then met up and headed over to the Villa Borghese, which hosues the Museo e Galleria Borghese.  This museum is what used to be the summer home of the Borghese family and I must say what a summer home this place was.  Marble of the most extraordinary colors and designs covered the floors, lined the walls in giant columns, and statues in every room were chiseled from the stunning stone.  Let’s just say that if this were my summer home, I wouldn’t ever leave the house. As we walked around, students gave presentations on different works of art, each one as magnificent as the next.  I felt extremely overwhelmed to be standing in front of centuries-old creations of masters like Bernini and Caravaggio that were so important during the renaissance era.  The feeling was similar to staring face to face with a ghost - only instead of the color draining out of my face, it warmed as the blood rushed to my head as my brain tried to comprehend all of the complexities and history behind these statues and paintings before me.  I still can’t quite figure out how someone can take a giant slab of marble and turn it into something so beautiful.  It’s as if a particular moment has been extracted straight from the renaissance era and preserved in marble for years and set on display.  The details in the stone are so lifelike that it’s difficult to accept that these sculpted humans are made of marble and not flesh and blood.  Weeks after returning from this trip, I’m still sitting in awe.  So goes Rome…

My lil' pup pup friend!

Unfortunately, I wasn’t allowed to take any photos in the gallery so instead I will just tell you about my favorite piece of art there.  At the ripe age of 24, Gian Lorenzo Bernini sculpted Apollo and Daphne…so I better get to stepping on my masterpieces.  The story of this sculpture is nearly as beautiful as the sculpture itself.  As Greek mythology says, when Apollo insulted Cupid, Cupid sought revenge and shot Apollo with a golden arrow while also shooting a most gorgeous nymph Daphne with a lead arrow.  While Apollo fell madly in love with Daphne, Daphne felt nothing but hatred for Apollo (and every other person who attempted to woo her).  Eventually, Cupid stepped in and helped Apollo get a hand up on catching her, when Daphne called upon her father for help asking, “Help me, Peneus! Open the earth to enclose me, or change my form, which has brought me into this danger!” As she wished, her skin turned into bark, her hair into leaves, and her arms into branches while her feet took root in the soil beneath them; she had become a laurel tree.  Even as a tree, Apollo loved Daphne just as much and vowed to tend to her forever as a tree, use her branches to decorate the heads of leaders.  On the base of the sculpture lies an engraved quote, “Those who love to pursue fleeting forms of pleasure, in the end find only leaves and bitter berries in their hands.”

After leaving the Villa, we went on to see so many churches that I cannot recall the name of one.  Pretty soon, the sun had set and it was dinner time.  Our teacher, Katarina, who might I add is one of the most intelligent women I have ever met, took us to one of the only remaining restaurants who continue to brew Roman beers.  And this woman can drink too (she’s Austrian, c’mon)! I had a stupendous meal of a Roman traditional spaghetti with pepper and pecorino.  I know…three ingredients and my head was spinning.  Even so, my favorite part of the meal was getting to sit my teacher in such a formal setting and talk about every day things that you rarely get a chance to do.  I always find the idea of my professors being real people odd because it’s just so hard to imagine them living any other lives besides being an educator.  Usually my first thing to do when meeting a professor is to picture them in their living room…always humorous to see what my imagination conjures up in its free time.

M.J. lives on in Rome!

The next morning, we woke up early with the intent of covering every inch of Rome by foot.  Breakfast in the hotel was a treat, let me tell you, just because there were scrambled eggs.  I’m not sure why, but it seems as though Italians just don’t eat breakfast.  Totally contradicts the American rule that breakfast should be the biggest meal of the day.  And look how that turned out…Americans are larger than Saint Peter’s Basilica while the Italians are thinner than the spaghetti they eat.  Interesting, no? Moving on. 

Trevi Fountain by Night.  Legend has it that if you throw a coin into the fountain you return to Rome...I threw three.

The Pantheon is an old Roman Temple from 126 AD.  It really is truly amazing that such a building was able to be created of this magnitude in such an ancient time.  Even 2000 years after it was built, the dome of the Pantheon still remains the largest unreinforced concrete dome.  Just take a minute and try to figure out how to do that. In fact, take a lot of minutes.  Take some years.  Good luck.  The oculus in the dome, which is the only place that light comes in to illuminate the room, was my favorite part of the building.

All artists who want glory and fame please apply to make my marble plaque.

After grabbing a quick, and the hands down best cappuccino I have ever had at   Sant Eustachio Il Caffe, we headed to The Fountain of Four Rivers, located in Piazza Navona.  This fountain was my presentation and also a happened to be a second favorite of the city’s masterpieces.  No surprise that it was another Bernini sculpture, either.  Each of the gods depicted in the fountain represent the four continents that at the time were thought to exist.  Each tiny detail of the gods hints towards their respectable continents: the Ganges god carries an oar which symbolizes the navigability of the river, Nile god is draped in loose piece cloth which symbolizes that no one knew exactly where the source of the Nile was, the Danube god touches the Papal coat of arms, symbolizing that it is the largest river closest to Rome, and finally, the Rio della Plata river is sitting on a pile of coin which symbolizes the riches America may offer to Europe.  All of the sight seeing had worked up the appetite of the class and yet again, Katarina’s knowledge of Rome led us to a wonderful pizza place near the Pantheon.  My friends Chrissie, Catherine, and Kathleen split four pizzas between us: Mushroom, sausage, and onion; fiore di zucca (zucchini flowers!); prosciutto crudo; and cuatro fromaggio (one of the cheeses was bleu cheese?!).  I really truly enjoyed the formal setting again as we split bottles and bottles of wine among the class tables getting to know each other.

Be jealous.

Are you not entertained? Well then, perhaps the Colosseum pictures will change your mind.  This place is effin’ cool.  The moment you step into the walls of the Colosseum, you feel like a spectator of Ancient Rome.  Let your imagination run free as you picture the wildest of battles go on in the stadium floor before you.  While the actual floor is no longer in tact, you can see down into the chambers that hid beneath the wood of the battleground.  It was through these chambers that the gladiators would walk through, but also where the exotic animals that had been starved and mistreated would be transported up to the floor where they would either ravishly tear apart the gladiators or meet their maker at the tip of a sword.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for animal rights, but this is some really cool stuff to see.  An interesting fact I learned there is that they used to flood the entire stadium to do boat races.  Also, the reason that the Colosseum is so torn apart is because Romans used to take bricks and stone from the building’s structure to build houses and other buildings, not valuing at all the grandeur of such a place.  It seems the old saying, “you only know what you’ve got when it’s gone,” rings true even for Rome.

Fast forward to the next morning.  To get a spot in line at the Vatican, we had to wake up at 6 am and go to wait for an hour in line just to wait in another line.  Well worth the wait I’d say.  The contents of the Vatican Museum were a perfect depiction of the power that it holds in the world today.  A few of my noted favorites were The School of Athens, Disputation of the Most Holy Sacrament (a wonderful fresco that shows the conflictions between religion and science), The Transfiguration, St. Jerome (a sketch of an unfinished Leonardo Da Vinci work – a small square once cut out was recovered from the bench of a shoemaker, what a lucky bum), the Hallway of Maps, and of course the Sistine Chapel.  Pictures of these places do no justice, in fact almost disrespect, the magnificence of each art piece.  I honestly had no idea that the Vatican Museum was so big, or so crowded.  And this was apparently the “down” season for the Vatican.  Holy hell – pun intended.  Even Katarina was a bit taken aback by the crowd and I’m pretty sure we lost half of the class on our way to the Chapel.  Through my tour headphone I could hear Katarina talking about a painting but I’d have not the slightest clue where she was coming from.  That was a bit annoying, but I was too busy staring at the mosaic floors made of the tiniest marble tiles and imagining how long it would take to make.  

School of Athens

Ceiling of the Hallway of Maps

We were let loose for lunch and happened upon this wonderful restaurant where they spoke no English at all.  That’s how you know it’s authentic, fyi.  Luckily, our friend Ryan speaks rather good Italian and we somehow convinced the cook to serve us family style with a bunch of her favorites.  Yet another gastronomic success to add to my never ending list.  Seriously…I’m not coming home.

Our final stop was to St. Peter’s Basilica, the largest church in the world (it covers about 5.7 acres)!  To build this basilica today would cost somewhere around $50 billion.  Please send your donations to my home address, personal checks are accepted and all amounts are appreciated.  I stood speechless staring up at the marvelous dome above St. Peter’s tomb until I realized that my class had moved over to hear about Michelangelo’s Pieta.  

I found Nell!

This trip left me knowing one thing and that is that you can go to Rome every day for the rest of your life and see something new each time.  The empire may have fallen, but the Renaissance lives on in this city of splendor.  I highly recommend a trip here.

Four Rivers Fountain

Don't let the outfits deceive you. These men are no clowns.