Hello! Welcome back to my blog! I hope that you enjoyed my first post since arriving here, and I am thrilled to share this next installment detailing my first week here in Firenze! I left off my last post detailing my apartment and first night out, and I will be picking up here to tell about my program field trip to Mantua and Verona. The trip began bright and early by meeting at the Santa Croce promptly at 6 o'clock in the morning (mind you, this is only my third day in Italy, and having not adjusted to the time change, that felt like starting my day at midnight 😟). All the students in my program were divided into three groups, and we boarded the buses to start making our way to Mantua. There was a stop at a rest area for breakfast along the way, and if you were a local stopping by when we all got there, you would have thought it was the apocalypse based on how many of us flooded the entire place. Many students stopped to get snacks, but all the options were in Italian and unfamiliar packaging, so everyone just ended up buying the one recognizable snack, which was Pringles. The rest of the bus ride wasn't so bad, and before we knew it we were in Mantua.
If the name Mantua sounds vaguely familiar to you, it's because you must have read some Shakespeare in your educational career. Mantua is mentioned a few times in Romeo and Juliet. For example, it is where Romeo is banished to after killing Tybalt to avenge Mercutio's death, and it is where Romeo receives new that Juliet is dead, which is the reason that he decides to buy poison and thus sets the tragic ending of the play in motion. Pretty neat huh? Shoutout to my sophomore English teacher Mrs. Benton, because I was actually really excited to be traveling to Mantua and Verona after reading Romeo and Juliet in her class, which is where I started my affinity for Shakespeare.
Okay enough of a literature lesson, I'll get back to explaining my trip! The entire day in Mantua was guided tours, so we began by touring the "Palazzo Ducale", or palace of the Dukes. This palace was built by the Gonzaga family (yes college basketball fans, that is where the Gonzaga name comes from) between the 14th and 17th centuries. This was an amazing tour because of how much the Gonzaga family valued art. Every single room was ornately decorated with gold and paintings and intricate architecture. It makes HGTV's hot trends look boring and dull! After the tour of the Duke's Palace, we were able to go off on our own for lunch, which is where I got the pumpkin ravioli in a butter-sage sauce pictured below. I had never had that dish before, and it was such a treat... I loved it! Overall, this was a great day, and I was glad that this was a trip that my program booked, because this probably wasn't somewhere that I would have gone on my own.
The second day of this trip was spent in Verona. I am sure this is another familiar name to you, if not more so than Mantua, because Verona is the hometown of Romeo and Juliet. This was another fantastic day. It began by walking over a gorgeous bridge with beautiful views, which is pictured below. This was an immediate indication to me that I was going to love Verona, and I was not wrong! After the bridge we moved on to walk through the amphitheater of Verona, which is actually 30 years OLDER than the Roman colosseum! After visiting the amphitheater, we moved on to visiting Romeo and Juliet's houses. The spots that are claimed to be Romeo and Juliet's houses are a tourist attraction of course, considering the fact that the story of Romeo and Juliet is fictional, but it was fun to do nonetheless. There was a tunnel that we needed to pass through in order to get in to Juliet's garden (which is where the view of her famous balcony is), and the tunnel is filled with initials of couples and love letters stuck on with gum. I think that since not many people carry paper and pen with them when traveling, the bandaid became the most common medium used for this love messages. Not sanitary, but definitely innovative! After walking through the tunnel we entered Juliet's garden, which is where the statue of Juliet is located. It is said that grabbing Juliet's breast will bring good luck, and so many people have been grabbing it over the years it got so worn down it actually had to be replaced! 😳 Visiting Juliet's balcony concluded our official tour for the day, and all that followed was a delicious lunch and then we loaded back onto the buses for a four hour ride home.
That is all I have to tell about this mini trip, and next up I will be writing about my visit to Cinque Terre!
Ciao for now!
-Julia
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