Greece

        Leaving Italy was hard. But I had never been to Greece before so looking forward to something new really helped. In Greece we are located on the island of Paros, and staying in the main/only port town of Parikia. The island is beautiful and every Friday we go on a hike to explore a new part of our little island. Before coming to the island we spent 3 days in Athens in which case we visited the Acropolis and it's accompanying new museum. Of course, for these 3 days my camera didn't work but thankfully I went back there with my parents when they came to visit so I have lots lovely photos to share with you all. Italy was all about traveling and seeing new things while here on Paros we actually have to do work  and show up to class, which was a little hard to get used to.
        We have classes four days a week and I am taking Basic Drawing, Figure Drawing, Painting, Printmaking, Art History, Greek Literature, and Greek Language. The most intensive classes being painting, printmaking, and figure drawing but the other ones are important too. In painting we're working with oil paints and have tried different subjects and ideas such as earth palette (burnt sienna, yellow ochre, black, white), reflection, Impressionist using prismatic palette ( red, blue, yellow, white), landscape, portrait, narrative, heightening with white and a few more. Painting with oil colors is a lot different then anything else but I've learned a lot and really enjoy it. Figure drawing is really interesting. We started with general ideas of posses and form and then we learned about the skeleton and muscles of the body. I have improved probably 120% since the beginning. And I have figured out that I love printmaking, its so interesting. It's very similar to drawing but gives you a completely different feeling.
        I just wanted to let everyone know a little bit about what I'm doing here. Lots of pictures to follow. Loves and Kisses, Hugs and misses- Cori

The end of our Italian tour: Roma

 

Rome was the perfect way to leave Italy. I feel like it just sums it all up and is the perfect transition into Greece. On your first day in Rome John took us on a walking tour around where our hotel was located. The first picture of a fountain is from the Piazza Navona which has two fountains created by Bernini.  After that we went on to the Pantheon, which is one of my favorite monuments in the whole world. It is a piece of architecture created in the Roman period which combines Roman ideals with Greek. It is a temple originally dedicated to a variety of gods but now is dedicated to the Virgin Mary, of course. The next day we visited the Vatican Museums and St. Peters Basilica. The Vatican museums, which house Raphael's School of Athens as well as the Sistine Chapel, were so crowded it took forever to get through it all. But there was also a section of the museums which housed statues including  The Laocoon, shown above. Then we went inside St. Peter's which is crazy decorated but amazingly beautiful. Housed inside the basilica, St. Peter's is not a cathedral because it is the personal chapel to the Pope,  is Michelangelo's La Pieta. On our last day in Rome we walked through the Forum and finished at the the Colosseum. After this we all went exploring through the city and there is an image of a shot taken over the Tiber river to the small island Tiberna. Our last night we visited the Spanish Steps and the Trevi Fountain.

Siena

After looking at pictures of Siena you understand where the colors raw or  burnt sienna come from. The whole city is covered with this warm, reddish brown color. The contrast between that and the crazy Italian blue sky and the various trees was just breath taking. First we visited the main square called the Piazza del Campo which is where the commune building is located. The interesting thing about Siena is that it retains a "ward-centric" society which means that there are different areas of the city which are represented by animals or mascots. There only seems to be rivalries between the different areas during the famous Palio horse races which take place in the piazza del campo. After that we visited the great Cathedral of Siena which is huge and and the interior is all striped which looks oddly Egyptian. Finally we climbed to the top of the Cathedral museum where we got to see some great views of the city. 

Pistoia our homebase

Pistoia was the perfect city for us to be based in. It wasn't too big but not too small and it was lively and lovely and just wonderful all around. All the people of the city knew who we were cause every Fall a new group of American students come. They were all very nice people and there was the best place for me to use my Italian. Every Wednesday and Saturday they'd have huge markets in the larger squares of the city which was always full of people. We actually got to meet the mayor of the city, who turned out to be a bad guy, and we got to have a reception in the commune building. This year was also the 20th anniversary of the Aegean Center having an Italy program so we had a big music concert at the end of September with a big buffet party after.

Prato

One day we decided it would be nice to visit the lovely city of Prato. It is on the train ride from Pistoia to Florence so you just have to get off, look around and continue on to Florence. The one thing we really wanted to see in Prato were the frescoes by Fillipo Lippi, as well as others, located in the cathedral of Prato dedicated to Saint Stefano. Also there is an exterior pulpit that was decorated by Donatello. Other then that all I know about Prato is that it's a beautiful city with really good biscotti.

Top to Bottom: Cathedral of Prato (w/ Donatello Pulpit on the right), Main square in front of the Cathedral, Lamp post, Fountain, Dinosaurs on the side of the road, views from a bridge.

"It's a tower and it's leaning..." (in Pisa)

A wise woman once stated the title phrase and I have decided to share with all you lovely people why the Leaning Tower of Pisa is more then just a leaning tower. The tower is actually a campanile, Italian for bell tower, which accompanies the cathedral of Pisa. This cathedral was the first to use what is now called the "Pisan-Romenesque" style which is usually characterized by green and white marble stripes, as well as round arches and blind arcades. This is mostly visible of the bottom half of the cathedral. The top half is decorated in a Gothic style which was added later. This is one of the first places where we saw any kind of buildings surrounded by large patches of grass but it was all quite beautiful. Along with the bell tower and the cathedral there is a baptistery and a Composanto Monumentale, which is a huge cemetery. The building that surrounds the "holy field" of the cemetery actually got mostly destroyed by a bomb in WWII but it was restored after the war by a group of volunteer art historians. From top to bottom: Leaning Tower, Cathedral of Pisa, Baptistery, Interior dome of the baptistery, Composanto Monumentale, city wall of Pisa.

Firenze

Florence was the city we visited most after Pistoia. It is filled with beautiful architecture and art. On our first day in Florence it happened to be the feast day of the main cathedral of Florence which celebrates when the first stone of the cathedral was laid in 1296. This meant that we were there on the only day of the year when the terrace around the cathedral is open to the public. We got to see amazing views of the city, and of course I forgot my camera but my friend Jade let me borrow some of hers. We saw lots of great museums in Florence and had some really great gelato.It will always be one of my favorite Italian cities.
 Top to Bottom: View over the Arno, Basilica of Santa Croce, Church of Santa Maria Novella, Views of the duomo, The front facade of the main cathedral Santa Maria del Fiore