This weekend was our long awaited program excursion. Our trip started Thursday morning, not before a test in Italian though. Margarita packed all who were going on the trip a bagged lunch and sent us on our way. Our first stop was Montepulciano. I was fooled at first by its small town appearance. I thought that we were visiting another local town that does not see too many tourists and is full of the Tuscan charm that we are used to seeing in Sansepolcro. This illusion was quickly thrown out the window when after walking up the first big hill in the town all the local signs were in English. The realization that we had not come to a quiet local town was a bit disappointing. I personally enjoy going to towns where the locals are not used to seeing Americans walking around their streets. It is in those times that I feel as if I am experiencing the true Italian culture. However, after seeing a sign I remembered that Montepulciano is the city where much of the wine that we drink comes from. This thought was in the forefront of my mind because Lauren and I had just eaten with our host family a couple nights before and they served us wine and pointed out the Montepulciano label on the bottle. As if being a leading city in the wine industry was not enough to make this town seem not so quaint and unknown after walking up to the Piazza Grande I was informed that part of the new Twilight movie, “New Moon”, was filmed in this piazza. Now I know that many who are reading my blog may not know what Twilight is so I will quickly explain. Twilight started off as a book series (4 books) and the first of the books was made into a movie last November. This movie swept across America and created a huge fan base for itself. Now, I myself am not a huge Twilight fan but I have seen the movie and am more than happy to share with any of my jealous friends, who are big fans of the books and the movies, the pictures of me standing in the same square that Edward Cullen was in. (Edward Cullen is one of the main characters of the movie and the new heartthrob of many teenage girls.) I’m not sure if the locals know it yet, but Montepulciano has now been changed forever. I will bet money on the fact that many people will go to visit the town now just because Twilight was filmed there.
La Foce was the next stop. We went to visit La Foce because those who are in Dr. Webb’s class, this does not include me, have read about a woman who lived on this property with her Italian husband and they hid people during the Second World War. La Foce is still owned by the same family but is now rented out as villas. The property of La Foce was gorgeous. There were a couple gardens on the property full of boxed hedges, rosemary, thyme, and many flowers that overlooked Val d’Orcia. The view from this property was breathtaking. You could see the Tuscan mountains and the smooth hills with winding roads within them. If I could ever afford it, La Foce would be a beautiful place to have a wedding!
From the gardens we walked about one kilometer to the cemetery. The man and woman who helped house people during the war are buried here. This cemetery was unlike anything I had ever seen. Each tombstone was full of bright colored flowers along with a picture of each person. I loved the idea of having a picture of the person on their grave because it makes the person’s life seem real and truly remembered. All of these components made this burial ground a place to enjoy remembering lost loved ones instead of feeling like death.
Soon after leaving the cemetery came: the ride to the place where we would spend the night, dinner and bed. Of course there were many laughs, memories made, and girl talk between all of these activities. The next morning brought 9 girls, 4 professors, and a driver packed in a bus for more hours than I would care to remember. Our destination was Matera in the south of Italy. The ride was not a boring one, at least when it came to scenery. Even though we were riding along a highway there were mountains along side either side of the road for the majority of the trip. We even passed Mt. Vesuvius, an active volcano to the east of Naples. I could see steam or smoke coming from the sides of the mountain. I knew that Pompeii and Mt. Vesuvius were places that I wanted to go and see at some point, but after just passing by the volcano I want to be able to climb it and say that I’ve been there before the next eruption. Towards the end of our journey Lauren, Chelsea, Amanda and I broke out into song, kid’s songs that is. We recollected our favorite songs that we sang when we were children and taught them to one another and sang along with each other. I could not remember one of my favorite songs so I went with “Herman the Worm.” Herman is a worm who gradually gets bigger and bigger from eating ridiculous things until the very end when he burps and shrinks down to his normal size. I use to sing this song in the car with my aunt all the time when I was younger. Luckily, by the time we began to run out of songs we reached Matera.
When we arrived it was about 8:00pm and a bit chillier than I had expected. The first view that we had of the city of Matera after getting off of the bus was breathtaking. We walked over to a nearby wall and looked out over a city that was completely lit up. The way the houses were designed and set up were unlike anything I had ever seen. It reminded me of what I would imagine Greece to look like. “The Passion of the Christ” was filmed in Matera so it must in some ways resemble Jerusalem. After finding and settling into our hostel Bekah, Amanda, Lauren, Hannah, and I went out to dinner. We had a true southern Italy dinner: go to dinner at 9:00pm, wait over an hour for our meal, and go home around 11:30pm. Needless to say, we couldn’t wait for dinner to be over so we could go to sleep!
On Saturday we traveled to many smaller towns around the area. We went to see the town that was near and dear to Carlo Levi’s heart, Aliano. In this town there was a Carlo Levi museum and we also went to visit the house that Levi was confined to during the Second World War. It was interesting to see pieces of history and places that are studied, but once again, this part of the trip truly benefited those in Dr. Webb’s class who have read about Levi. Even though I did not know as much about the history of Aliano as those in the English class it was still interesting to see places where history took place.
Our next stop was Craco, Italy. Craco is a town that was abandoned many years ago due to a mudslide. Craco is on the edge of a mountain that looks like it is made up of many individual rocks instead of many solid pieces of rock. The city looked as if an earthquake had taken place and not a mudslide. Houses were still standing but near destroyed. What is left of the mountain is extremely cracked and according to Dr. Swabb it will only take one heavy rain for another mudslide to take place.
The last night that we spent in Matera was a little bit like the first except we went to a museum to see some of Carlo Levi’s works. After this Bekah, Hannah, Lauren and I walked around Matera trying to kill time before dinner even though we were already starving. To hold us over until the restaurants opened we went for gelato. Yes, we ate gelato in November! While walking around with our ice cream in hand we found a small Osteria that looked promising. Apparently we had good instincts because the restaurant was amazing and very reasonably priced. I ate pasta and a whole pizza! Why do I have the feeling that when I go back to the States I am going to be hungry most of the time?
8:30am was our departure time on Sunday morning. Once again we all piled onto the bus and tried our best to get comfortable. Our arrival time in Sansepolcro was 7:45pm. This included a two hour break in Paestum. Paestum is a city near Salerno. It is known its ancient ruins that were not rediscovered until the 18th century. We had two hours to visit the museum, see the ruins, and eat lunch. Therefore, trying to grasp the history of the town and its ruins was a bit difficult to do in such a condensed amount of time but I plan on doing more research about it in the near future. Though antsy, the last couple of hours on the bus were made bearable with gummy bears, a Coco-Cola, and Christmas carols that were sung by all on the bus! As I’ve said in my past entries, our weekend was amazing, but it is nice to be home!
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It is a very nice and good post. Keep up the good work.
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