Life in Castiglion Fio, a trip to Pisa, and a Pride & Prejudice Party

Thursday 2/6/03
I got almost 8 hours of sleep last night but nevertheless, I still went back to bed after breakfast. Then we met Paolo at the town hall at 11 and toured the local art gallery. I sketched, but didn't take pictures. We came back for lunch which, for a change, was tuna salad instead of meat and potatoes. After a course of pasta, of course.

We had a meeting after lunch to discuss the Santa Chiara situation and we are now scheduled to move in the last day of February. We took a tour of it today, and it is gorgeous. The courtyard has a breathtaking view. Then we had studio and Peter demonstrated to us how to watercolor. I am going to try tomorrow. We then met officially with the Mayor of Castiglion Fiorentino in the town hall. I ate all my junk food while reading Persuasion in the 30 minutes we had between that and dinner. Tomorrow I am going to the Co-op to get some major grape juice because seeing wine makes me crave it. We had good chicken for dinner. I have also become very grateful for the fruit afterward.

A lot of people went out tonight, and several played a crazy card game and got drunk downstairs in the bar.

Sunday, 2/9/03
I am in a very somber mood at the moment. I just went up to the roof to get away and it was very nice but a breeze was blowing just too cool for comfort, and there was no where to sit outside the path of the wind. I don't mind being here, but I don't want my roommates to think I just sit in bed all day when I don't have anything else to do. I still haven't found out where church is, so I just have to make the most of the Sabbath on my own.

Now, to catch up on the rest of the weekend. What did I do on Friday? I slept in, for one. After lunch Karin and I attempted to get our train tickets to Pisa from the ticket machine, but it didn't work. Then we wen to the Co-op and I got apple juice, because I guess Italians use all their grapes for wine. I also got a cake thing for breakfast on Saturday, and some chocolate. They are both gone now.

Friday afternoon I couldn't find anything as a watercolor subject in my room and I didn't want to go outside so I was going to do a storyboard type thing for a scene in my story. I couldn't draw anything remotely to be identified with fire in pencil though, so Karin and I went to the Tobacci and I got some cheap colored pencils. She got markers. My storyboard didn't turn out too well because I just can't draw things worth anything that I'm not looking at. It's a beginning, though. I even wrote a little bit. It's terrible, but at least I got my ideas on paper in two mediums. Visualizing my stories helps me to think more creatively about them and will, I think, improve my writing.

The next morning Karin and I got up for the 6:54 train to Pisa. We ran to the station worrying that we wouldn't be able to get our tickets (we had talked to someone and straightened out the problem with the machine) but it worked fine and we had five minutes to spare. It took us 2 1/2 hours to get there, with changing trains in Florence. We took the early train because we thought there would be more to do in Pisa than there really was. We planned on meeting someone in front of the tower at noon and so we just wasted the morning in the drab, uninteresting town. But she didn't show up. So, using Karin's "Let's Go" book we hunted for a little sandwich place to eat. It wasn't there. There was only a broken down plant shop. So much for travel guides.

We crossed the Arno again (which, being near the mouth, was very dirty and un-beautiful) for the third time to make our way back to the restaurants that we knew were near the chapel/tower/baptistery complex. After grabbing a sandwich we got our tickets to the Piazza del Duomo. It was €8,50 for everything but the tower. We went to a museum first where we saw models of the buildings, statues from them, and all kinds of other artifacts. Then we went to the Baptistery because the Duomo was closed for lunch. The Battistero was absolutely beautiful, round with two stacks of arches around the inside, but I won't attempt to describe it further. We climbed to the third level inside the roof, which I didn't know you could do, and realized that we were as high as the leaning tower. My legs were shaking with fatigue by the time we got down, so we decided not to pay the extra €15 for the tower. It sure is amazing from the outside, though. It looks so much more unsettling in real life than in pictures. No matter how long I stared at it, every time I came out of another building, it struck me again. It just looks so wrong. It really looks like it's going to fall over.

After the baptistery we went into the Camposanto (cemetery), a beautiful rectangular building with a courtyard in the center. The frescoes on the walls were burned in WWII so the walls were just blank, but the statues and marble grave tiles were gorgeous, as well as the marble walls that divided the hall from the courtyard. The walls were intricate, looked like they should have stained glass windows in them, but they didn't. The interior, if you could call it interior, was very much linked with the inner courtyard.

The Duomo itself was more beautiful than either the Duomo at Florence, or Santa Croce. The walls were all painted, there was a double row of arches in the side isles with vaults, and the ceiling, though flat, had a gold square pattern on it. We went to one more museum after that but all it was was an attempt to reconstruct the ruined frescoes. It would have been interesting if there was enough left of them to able to tell what they were depicting. After that museum we were out of Pisa. So, let it be known that there is only one site worth visiting in Pisa and it only takes half a day.

So the question after Pisa was, "Where to now?" We didn't want to go back to Castiglion early so we could either hang out in Firenze or stop in a town called Lucca. Lucca won because we won't have another chance to go there, even though the way the trains worked out, we could only spend an hour there.

The cool thing about Lucca was that, unlike many Tuscan towns, it isn't on a hill, but has a thick wall and a moat around it. The wall is 4km in perimeter and is wide enough for a small road and jogging paths on either side of it. The inner side just has a steep slope of grass going down where the wall itself is visible from the outer rim. Karin and I walked up the wall, down on the inside, and went into the town. We saw hardly anyone until, suddenly, the streets were packed with people shopping. What the heck was going on? We had no idea the town even had that many people, and why were they all shopping at once? So we made our way to the center of town, the Piazza Amfiteatro, which really was dead. It was a square that really wasn't square, but oval, with all the surrounding buildings touching, except for the four arches which accessed the piazza.

So Lucca has an oval center, with a ring of buildings surrounding it, then circular streets and plan, a moat around that, with a wall around that, then the newer part of the city surrounding, and on top of that, the beautiful night silhouette of mountains all the way around. We walked to the opposite side of town and then circled back on top of the wall We went by the garden district which was very pretty, though we could hardly see because it was dark. All this in one hour!

I forgot to mention that in Pisa we saw a nun riding a bicycle! I wanted to take a picture but I thought it would be rude.

Monday, 2/10/03
To finish up yesterday, I sketched a key for my studio project then attempted to watercolor it. Ate dinner and was going to finish my painting, but I found out that Kate was having a Pride & Prejudice party. So we pulled all three of their beds together and me, Kate, Morgan, Dixie, and Cady started watching P&P on Morgan's laptop. We only meant to watch the first half but part 4 was on the first DVD and I thought that would be a better stopping place than right after she rejects him. But the ending of part 4 is so wonderful that Morgan insisted on watching the rest. Kate and I practically have the movie memorized but the others hadn't seen it. So I didn't get to bed until after 3. I slept in, went to lunch, and went to studio to build a model of my key. After dinner I was going to improve my project but Morgan wanted to watch P&P again so much that we did, this time with Marie. We were sensible though, and only watched parts 1 and 2. Morgan is in love with Colin Firth now. It is quite hilarious. Buona notte.