Laurawesome

Ok I know I know, I am Dreadfully behind so I am going to do this quick and easy like ripping off a bandaid. Also, what better procrastination during finals “Oh no but I’m really being productive, I’m updating my blog.” Yes I am just saying that so I can feel better about having a design block, or perhaps it’s the realization that it’s 3 am, I’m doing laundry and can’t sleep anyways. Hm maybe I should get to the pictures, I know that’s why you guys are here anyways not to read this babbling.

So we went to this town Lecce which has all these super detail church facades and old stuff from these Roman dudes who seem to leave stuff everywhere I’ve been. And! they had a place with this really good “rustic pizza” that was like mozzarella and tomato in a phyllo like dough that was all gooey and delicious and hard to eat as they giggled as I failed miserably. The place also had candy bar flavored gelato like kinder and mars bar!
Finally we escaped the teeny towns to stay in the Sassi, the embarrassment of Italy in the 50s. People living with animals in caves! So then they moved them into government housing which we actually learned about monday in class, and they were pretty cool architecturally at least, planned based on the community style living and in these clusters based on the landscape. We sure didn’t get that opinion of them when we talked to the people there. It is amazing to see though. All of these places carved out of the hills, even churches mimicking styles of the popular architecture at the time even though they were carving it in the caves.

Enough babbling? maybe. ok Spain pictures next…. well maybe I’ll save that for procrastination tomorrow when I can’t sleep.

To save you from the 8 million pictures of the past 2 weeks of traveling I have courteously split up these posts and a lovely pickpocket thoughtfully stole my camera on my way home from Spain so you didn’t have to go through the tediousness of pictures of Seville, Granada, Cordoba or Madrid. However, I’m getting ahead of myself. Southern Italy first!

Pompeii , Paestum, Padula , Castel del Monte, Trani

Is it bad that they’re all starting to blend into each other? With the bus ride scenery inbetween that rather reminded me of the  windows xp background. Pompeii was amazing and creepy, it really is a ghost town, well now with tourists. But the plaster casts of the people at their moments of death was really creepy. Some peaceful, some flailing out, mouth open screaming.

That night the hotel we were staying at provided us dinner at which vegetarian translated into an omelet of just eggs on a bed of iceberg lettuce. But the night didn’t end there, it was a beach resort hotel… in February…Didn’t stop us from going down to the beach and going swimming. With much screaming (on my part) as I realized that it was cold enough to see my breath and the water was a good bit colder.

The next morning we went to the nearby ruins of an ancient Greek town, the temples still largely intact. Their perfect geometry made them oddly hard to draw, the portions of everything had to be just right. That was kind of the theme for the day as next we went to a monastery that was at the most amazing scale, it made you feel quite small but at the same time it wasn’t intimidating, it was peaceful in its seclusion looking up at the town on the hill above it.

The next day we packed up and headed to the next town visiting Castel del Monte on the way which was quite the opposite to a military defense castle, it was apparently an ancient think tank basically, the gathering place of the great minds of the time. Also a great view, you know the important part of any visit. After that we made it to the town we were staying and found ourselves in a rather luxurious renovated convent, wishing we were staying there longer, we found a great little pizza place and spent our time exploring the dead little town. The towns people seemed disturbed by our presence or  rather we were the entertainment as everyone stopped what they were doing to watch the Only tourists in the town.

The fun only continues… in the next blog entry that is.

I’m on it!

I have a full memory card of pictures (so at least 5 decent pictures hopefully) for the last week spent travelling around Southern Italy and am currently travelling around Spain. One day I will find the transfer thing for it so I can upload them. I will have to be in the same city for more than a day maybe.

In other words, I apologize for the hiatus, but expect stories and many pictures when I return.

In the mean time Iwas searching for some classy 90s clip art. Also learned the hard way not to image search the term spring break on google…thank goodness for the “clip art” filter. I settled on some good ol’ Calvin and Hobbs to tide you over. Who doesn’t love them?