student reflections of naples and sicily
AMY BOYEK
Naples
I would say my favorite thing about Naples was the Spanish Quarter. It was really small and busy and there were a lot of things going on. We had to sketch there and it was really hard because we had to constantly move for people who were on mopeds because the streets were so narrow. We ate at a little place in the Spanish Quarter where we had a full course meal -- three courses -- for 6 Euros. The guy just brought it out without us asking for it. The Galleria was very beautiful, I liked it a lot. Naples seemed less organized than Rome. It still had historic places but not as many as Rome. The over-all feeling was different than Rome. I went to the opera and inside it was really beautiful. We were all pleasantly surprised that we had box seats. I had never been in a box seat before. It was really nice. The opera was Candide, an opera that I had heard of but I had no idea what it was about. I definitely didn’t really like it but it was worth it just to see the opera house. Palermo
We took an overnight boat to Palermo. The rooms on the boat were very small but it was fun because it was like a sleep-over since we were in such close quarters. Palermo, as a city, was even more different than Rome. It was a step beyond Naples in that it was more like an American city. The roads were bigger and regulated. You rarely saw cobble stones. There were more modern buildings and also it was really dirty. We sketched the Duomo of Palermo and the Teatro Massimo. While we were sketching the Duomo, a big crowd of school children came by. We were not sure if they were protesting something or having a religious procession. They all had signs and they were all chanting. It was neat.
In Palermo we ended up going to the same restaurant two or three nights in a row because it was so hard to find places that were open. Everything closed early or never opened at all. It seemed like you had to walk forever to find anything.
My favorite part of Palermo was the shore line along the harbor. We walked all the way to where there was a park. Here was where I saw the most people at once in Palermo. It was perfect weather for walking around. We took a lot of pictures of the ocean and the rocks. There was a lot of graffiti all over the rocks but it was good graffiti like “Ti amo Frederica”. We also picked up sea glass. Three was a lot of sea glass on one of the little beaches at the very end where we walked. It was very dirty but it seemed all the garbage had caused all the sea glass to gather there. There were also a lot of cats around the rocks which I liked because I miss my cat.
Monreale
I liked Monreale a lot. It had a good small town feeling to it. Monreale was the first place that Maureen and I found potato pizza. The views were really beautiful. There was one overlook where we all took pictures. The monastery where we sketched was really interesting because all the capitols had different carvings on them. Spiro and I went around and picked out capitols and named them after each person in our group. Spiro’s carving happened to be a little naked boy feeding a dog. Spiro said mine was one guy hanging upside down.
Segesta
Segesta was a Greek temple but for me it was disappointing because that was all there was, just the temple. There were a lot of good views. It was a really good place to take pictures. A lot of the boys, however, were taking pictures of the German girls that were on a tour.
Erice
I liked Erice. I really liked the castles in Erice. There was one little castle that was out on its own island of a rock with no way to get to it. The big castle was made into a hotel but you could still walk around it. You were literally on the cliff’s edge when you walked around the walls. I liked how the whole town seemed to go together. All the buildings seem to go together and the stone paving tied it all together. The only odd thing about Erice was that there were no people which could have been the time we were there. It seemed more a museum for tourists than a living town.
Cefalu
Cefalu was my favorite of all the cities we visited. It was a good mix of a small town with big city qualities. The old part of the town looked a lot like Erice but there were more people. There was a whole street of shops that was always crazy and had really good stores. My group was in charge of analyzing the piazzas which meant we got to walk along that main road and analyze it.
The town was supposedly putting us up there and they had wanted us to come but it wasn’t entirely evident from all the town members what they meant by that. We got a really good guide the first day, Nikko. He told us a lot of interesting things that were really helpful. But the fact that the mayor kept snubbing us was kind of strange.
I climbed the mountain on the second to last day and it was amazing that there was a town up there at all. It seems like it would be so hard to bring anything up there. The ruins were still pretty well preserved. After a certain point on the climb up the mountain, there were no good trails. It was just walking on the mountain. There was sheep poop all over the trails. When I got to the top of the mountain, finally, because I am really bad at climbing, my Mom called me. She said she was really jealous of me that I was on top of a mountain and I said: “Don’t be because you wouldn’t want to climb up here”.
You couldn’t take a bad picture from the top of the mountain and you really couldn’t take a bad picture of Cefalu either. I would definitely like to come back there when it is warmer so I could swim and enjoy the beach. I liked the town so much. Even though I know it is really tourist based, it didn’t have that feel like a lot of the other places did.
In summary I would say I really liked our vacation because it was nice to get away from Rome for a while. It made me appreciate Rome more because I didn’t realize that some things are just particular to Rome. At the same time I was really glad when it was over because it is really hard to go day after day with no breaks. I think the trip made me want to try more new things in Rome now that I am back here. On the trip you had to do new things everyday so it makes you want to try and go to new restaurants and new places back here too.
J
AKE CONTE Naples
When I first got to Naples, it felt newer, more modern than Rome. The architectural style was newer and how the city looked seemed newer. The traffic was just as crazy as Rome but the cab ride wasn’t as crazy as I was told it would be. We stayed in a nice hotel. It was definitely the best hotel I have ever stayed in on a school trip. They were really nice rooms. The Pompeii Museum was really cool. I had been to Pompeii before when I was in high school. At that time our stay in Naples was minimal -- from the boat to the bus. They didn’t want us walking around Naples.
We went to the opera. It was a crazy opera, Candide. I had no idea what was going on with the story. As for the night time in Naples, it seemed kind of boring. We had to walk twenty minutes to find anything and then we just turned around and came back. We had a decent breakfast in the hotel.
In summary Naples wasn’t as bad as I heard in terms of safety. It didn’t seem any more dangerous than any other city I had been to and the night life seemed kind of boring. It wasn’t a bad city all together.
Palermo.
Palermo is definitely a much more modern city than Rome. The downtown looks like a lot of buildings have been built in the last forty years but also a lot of the buildings look like they are falling apart. The hotel was decent, Le Joli. The intersection called the Four Seasons was cool. I really liked the opera house. It fit all together in the space that it was created for it. It worked. The cathedral was originally a mess. The outside was definitely better than the inside. The outside, even though it had all kinds of architectural styles, seemed connected. Even though they changed styles over the years, it felt connected. But inside the cathedral, it was a complete disconnect from the outside. It had a Renaissance interior while the outside was a combination of Norman, Arabic, and Byzantine influences.
In the outdoor market, I did know we were going to have a spleen sandwich before we ate it. I was definitely apprehensive but it actually tasted pretty decent. It was definitely not what you would expect spleen to taste like.
One interesting little side point, I found out that Italians have very small feet. I tried to buy shoes in both Naples and Palermo but they didn’t have anything in my size.
Monreale
An amazing view. The cathedral was definitely very nice. It was too bad the piazza was ripped up at the time but overall it was a nice building. It had some pretty cool side chapels -- one you could go into and one you couldn’t go into. It had an interesting roof structure that didn’t line up at all with the actual building structure. The little cloister was nice. You could definitely make out the multiple periods when the building was built. In some parts, there was a mix match of parts.
I had my picture taken with the barber in the main piazza. I still don’t know why I was singled out for it but I was and he is going to put my picture on his wall. Maybe he chose me because I was tall and blond. All in all, Monreale was a nice little city. It reminded me of Assisi, a small hill town.
Segesta
It was a pretty cool temple-- a Greek temple on top of the hill. It was cool seeing a Greek temple but there was not much left to it. Just the shell.
Erice
It was definitely a great view -- 2500 feet up will do that for you. I was pretty impressed that they would build a city on top of a mountain like that. The castle up there was pretty cool. They had actually preserved the castle. Some of things they build on the side of the cliffs were pretty scary. They were building on the edge of a 200 foot cliff. It impressed me that this town is still inhabited and is not a ghost time since it is not easy to get to.
Cefalu
Cefalu has a gorgeous beach and the mountains are really gorgeous. It is a great setting for a town. We stayed at a nice hotel, Hotel Tourist. I liked the exterior of the cathedral better than the interior because the interior looked half finished since they were renovating it.
The old city has a lot of charm to it as compared to the other modern parts of the city. The newer part is a mess in terms of its layout. I had wonderful experiences with the Italian time management. They would say, “We will meet you at nine”, and then they wouldn’t show up until ten.
As for my actual Cefalu project, I was in the beach and promenade group. We were supposed to get the different ways the promenade, beach and the ocean were connected or in some cases, how you can visually see them but there are no actual physical connections. In other words, you can’t get from one to the other.
I hiked the mountain twice. It was definitely worth it both times. The second time we ran up the mountain in half an hour since we wanted to see the sunset. We also wanted to prove everyone else wrong who said we wouldn’t be able to see it. We didn’t actually see the sun go down but we did see the sunset. We also saw a flock of sheep with a sheep dog. They were in the castle on top of the mountain. I was surprised to see how well the sheep dog could keep track of the sheep. On the way up and down we thought John was going to kill himself since he keep falling. He did actually crack his toe nails because he kept falling on the rocks. On the way down, we saw the Temple of Diana and we went to the overlook overlooking the city where you can look down on top of the cathedral. It was an amazing view of the city from up there. We also explored a cave. Spiro thought there were ghosts in the cave. I think the cave was supposed to be locked up because there was a gate. We went down about eight feet on steps and then it opened up to a little platform with two crevices on either side. The right one dropped down fifteen more feet and then opened up again. We didn’t go down. You would want ropes to go down there.
We went swimming a few times. The first time, the water didn’t seem that cold. We were more worried about the massive waves. The second time, it was calmer but it seemed colder. It was, however, warmer than my morning showers at the hotel.
The whole Sicily experience was definitely a lot of fun. It was a very good experience and not something I will ever regret not going on. It will be good to get back to Rome and have cheep food again.
MATT DE LUCA
Naples
I thought Naples had beautiful views. It was one of the first things I noticed especially from our hotel. It was also particularly beautiful down off the dock areas. Architecturally, I thought the Galleria Umberto was very interesting. I especially liked the enclosed space. It gave both an outdoor feel to the façade but at the same time the glass roof made it feel enclosed. To me, the building had almost a duel function.
The opera house was beautiful as well and I especially liked seeing the opera, Candide. Just from the outside the opera house looked plain but once you got inside, it was very elegant.
I did notice there was a lot more graffiti in Naples than in a lot of the other cities we had seen. There was also a different sense of style here than in Rome. It seems like Rome has a more classy sense of dress and style. Naples seems to be more hip hop. When you look at everyone in Rome, they always have on nice jeans and a blazer, but in Naples, they are more into baggy clothing. Naples is so different. It is like we were in a different age. It was like being in the 1980s.
The mosaics were beautiful in the archeological museum. I actually liked the sheet of glass that encased or enclosed the court yard. It had a modern touch to a more classical building.
Palermo
The Duomo in Palermo was interesting just because of all the different styles of architecture. It made it very difficult to draw. We saw the Teatro Massimo in Palermo as well from the outside. It was interesting to see how the landscaping around the theater had trees trimmed almost like the French would trim trees -- the French way of trimming trees into box like forms.
The four corners intersection was an interesting touch to an intersection that you don’t usually see especially in America. It really gave prominence to that intersection. The buildings around the four corners of the intersection each had a fountain and sculptures. In the US there would be no details to the buildings. It would be a dry corner.
Palermo was also where I was introduced to the dessert, “sette vieli” (seven veils). It was so delicious. Oh my God, I would like to take one of those pies back with me. It was layers and layers of chocolate cake. It was a very pure chocolate with an almost gram cracker quality to the bottom. Ah, so delicious!
Monreale
Monreale was interesting. Again it had beautiful views from the top of the mountain but it was completely different from the views in Naples. The church was beautiful too because of the details in the mosaics. The colors were very vivid in this church. The cloisters were amazing. I liked how they incorporated different designs in the columns-- whether in the capitols or the design on the column itself.
Segesta
It was interesting to see a Greek temple in the middle of Italy especially in the location it was in. I is interesting to try and figure out how in the past they got the building materials to a certain location and this was a perfect example of that. I think a lot of times when I see these buildings in remotes areas, I just wonder how did they get those buildings there. It was such a heavy building but it seemed light when I was sitting on those hills behind it.
Erice
Erice was one of the most favorite places that I have ever been to. It was a very small town but there was a lot of detail in the buildings. It seemed very pleasant. It kind of felt like you were on cloud nine. In Erice, I saw an interesting window and door combination. I have a bunch of pictures of it. You have the door frame and instead of having the window completely separate from this, the window was attached to the door frame so it created an upside down “L” shape. It was something completely different from anything I have ever seen before.
The castle was beautiful. It looked like it was growing out of the stone. It was interesting when we were there. The clouds were intersecting the castle and the castle was growing out of the ground. It was heavenly. It was, however, disappointing we couldn’t get into the castle.
Cefalu
Cefalu was again a beautiful city. All the cities we visited were very elegant and beautiful. It was nice spending as much time as we did in Cefalu because it gave us a better sense of how it was laid out and what was needed architecturally to be done to correct the flaws of the city. This was basically for our projects. I had, as they called it, the morphology of the street-- basically the water front. We addressed the different phases of the waterfront structure and how it relates to the street directly behind these buildings. We were noting how in Erice the city grew out of the stone wall that they had originally used for fortification.
Climbing up “The Rock” as they called it was a lot of fun but at the same time tiring. This gave the best views of the city especially the ones that overlooked the church. Our hotel was out in the middle of nowhere which made the walks back at night extremely tiring. We went to the same restaurant almost every night. They had excellent food. They had a “Rigatoni Napoli” which was rigatoni pasta with a blend of tomato sauces and cheese. Delicious!
It was an excellent trip. I am looking forward to the one when we go North. I thought Dave did a really good job keeping everything organized-- the trains, the hotels. Stanley did a good job of adding humor to our days.
MARCO DE VITTORIO
Naples
It was an awesome, amazing city. I have never actually been in Naples for more than ten minutes because we were always driving down to my hometown in Gallipoli. So every time we just passed through Naples. It was always pretty quick. The traffic was always terrible and it was always my Dad driving. He would get so frustrated going through Naples because the traffic was so bad. Before this trip, the only place I have ever stayed at near Naples was Castellamare di Stabia which is a little further down from Naples.
Being in Naples this time was a completely different experience. The traffic is still as bad as it used to be but the Napolitani are great people. They are so nice, so gentle. There were always asking us how we liked Naples because everyone has such a bad impression of Naples. I tried to explain to them that it was different from my first impression of it when we passed through with my parents. Our cab driver, when we arrived at the train station, was really nice. It was like being in a car with the race car driver Schumacher. He was trying to explain to us why the traffic was as bad in Naples. He told us the streets were not meant for vehicles but rather they were meant for horses.
After we arrived at the hotel, we went to see the Galleria Umberto. It was incredible. I never expected it to be at the angle. When you approach it, it is hidden on the street and then suddenly it just opens up. It is very nice. It is open, It is not too crowded. It is beautiful. Even on the main street of Naples, it is full of a lot of young kids our age walking around. I especially liked the girls. There were a lot of beautiful girls. Every angle, every corner I turned, there was another group of beautiful girls. There would be at least one super model in the group and the rest would be just models. It is like my small town where there are a lot of pretty girls too but in Naples it is like ten times ten.
Getting back to the architecture, I thought the most interesting part of the whole trip was the Spanish Quarter where the streets were so tight. The buildings facades were so close together and so intricate. It was interesting how you could look down one of the streets and you could see all the way up the street and all the way down. It was really interesting to turn every corner and see another unique street with its own design.
The archeological museum was one of the coolest museums that I have ever been in. I worked with restoring ancient villas, the Stabiea Foundation. It is a program similar to the one they have in Pompeii. There we were doing excavations and I worked with them closely. I gave tour guides at the Natural History Museum on the mall in DC. So I already had an idea of what the mosaics would be like inside of the archeological museum here in Naples. I thought it was interesting to compare the ones I worked with and the ones from Pompeii. They were really similar. You could tell that they came from the same period. The only difference was that the villas were little better preserved compared to the ones we saw in this museum. They seemed to have more color than the ones that came from Pompeii. The town of Castellamare di Stabia was a little further away from Mt. Vesuvious than Pompeii so it had less volcanic ash. The damage was done closer to the volcano where Pompeii was located.
The views from the top of the hotel were amazing--the panoramas. The panoramic views of Mt Vesuvius, the Bay of Naples and the Mediterranean were amazing.
We got on the boat and the boat was interesting. It was like a flash back to the seventies. It had the same smell as Mullen Library at Catholic University. It smelled really awful. The cabins were tight, really close together. I had a lot of trouble sleeping that night because Spiro and Owen were wrestling inside the room and outside the room. I actually managed to get a little sleep so it wasn’t that bad. The food was terrible but still it was an interesting experience.
Palermo
Arriving in Palermo, I already had a bad night and I was out of it so Palermo seemed pretty much like a normal city. It had regular buildings around the port. I had the same impression going to the hotel. The buildings were very similar to Lecce which is the biggest city closest to my home town. The first thing we did was go and get a cup of coffee and some breakfast. The hotel still needed time to get our rooms ready since we arrived so early. We went down the main street, Via Roma. It felt really familiar to other street I have been in but so far I didn’t see anything that really interested me. Then we finally unpacked and got our luggage into our rooms. The rooms were really nice. We met up with Mario, the bus driver, and we all got in and started driving around the city. We started seeing some really interesting pieces of architecture. We passed by the intersection of the Four Fountains which was really brief but it started to give me a feel of the city which I thought was really beautiful. We passed by the Duomo of Palermo which was also very beautiful. I wanted to stop and look but we were on our way to Monreale.
Monreale.
Monreale was amazing. I thought it was beautiful. We stopped just outside of the town because the bus couldn’t drive in. Walking up to the town was really beautiful, really amazing. I was already starting to feel the character of the place just by looking at the stones in the streets. Then we went up to the cathedral which from the outside seemed interesting but not totally amazing. But when we walked inside the cathedral, it was completely different. I didn’t expect it to be so beautiful and so detailed. The different mosaics and sculptures were amazing. I have never walked into a church so detailed in my life. We spent a good two hours there which I didn’t think was enough. I could have stayed there all day sketching. We then had lunch next to the barbershop -- it was kind of a joint barbershop/restaurant in the piazza.
Palermo
We got back to Palermo from Monreale and the guys decided they wanted to rent scooters near by. We all got our bathing suits on because we expected the weather to stay warm and we could maybe go swimming at one of the beaches. We went and we rented these scooters. They only had three scooters to rent out with 125cc. You couldn’t rent a bigger scooter than that with an American driver’s license. We rode around Palermo to get the feel of the city and how the streets are laid out. I always like to drive around, especially on a scooter, to see what a town is like. The store owner of the scooter place told us where to go to get down to the beach. We all stuck together and we drove down the coast. We stopped at different spots to get pictures of us on the scooters and to get the different panoramic views. We arrived in the small town of Mondello which is a little west of Palermo. We parked our bikes and walked around the piazza and got something to eat. When we got back to our scooters it was already dark. Spiro and Joey turned out their scooters and they started just fine. But when I turned mine on, it was chocking and it wouldn’t start. We were there for another hour trying to figure out how to get my scooter started. We even asked the store owners in the square to help us get it started. They told us it was probably the battery. We called the store and I explained to the man the situation and he said not to worry. It was perfectly fine. He said; “Just find a public place, like a hotel and lock it up to a pole with a chain and back in the morning to the store.” So I rode back behind Joey’s scooter. We were really tired from the ride and the whole situation and so we went to bed real early. The next morning we went to the store and explained what had happened. He reimbursed me for the scooter and he told me that later in the day he would go and get the scooter back from Mondello.
We finally got to walk around Palermo. I got to see the Four Fountains up close. We took our time and just looked around. We even went back to the cathedral to sketch the outside which I thought was really interesting. Even the history was really amazing. The history of the cathedral was made up of different types of architecture. For instance, the Normans conquered the city and added their own parts of the façade.
The last night in Palermo we went to a bar called “Drunks”. It had good prices and it was a lot of fun. We even got other Italians from Palermo to start playing this game, Flip Cup, with us. It was great. Over all Palermo was a great city. In the beginning I was not so impressed but by the end I really got to like the place.
Segesta
I thought it was interesting. It was a beautiful temple. I liked seeing a different type of architecture. I spent a lot of time analyzing and measuring the materiality of the temple -- the texture of it and where it was located on top of this huge hill.
Erice
Erice was probably my favorite town that we visited in Sicily. It was definitely great. It reminded me of my Mom’s home town in Fardella. It is pretty much the same in that it sits very high up on this mountain top. The town of Erice itself was amazing, every street angel had its own unique characteristic. The castle that sat on top of the hill was amazing and the views were unbelievable.
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Cefalu
I think it is the town that most closely relates to my home town in Gallipoli except it is a little smaller than mine. It has been compromised in the same way with the old part of the town which is close by the water and then the outside which is the newer construction and where there is less order to it. The newer part of the town is kind of a mess. The beaches are a lot smaller than my home town. The biggest difference is “The Rock” of Cefalu which the old part of the town really embraces. In Gallipoli the old part of the town sits on the water and it is only attached by a bridge so it is like a little island off of the mainland.
I thought Cefalu was really interesting. The Duomo was kind of like a castle and a cathedral together. It sits above everything else in the small town. It is actually separate from the old part of town where as in Gallipoli , the old town is pretty much like a castle. I thought it was very interesting how the town meets the water. There is a really nice edge to the old part of town. It kind of suddenly drops and meets the water.
My group assignment was to understand the geology of the town itself, how the rock formed. But as we were researching it, it became more a research study of the entire region, The Madonie Mountains. We actually climbed “The Rock” as the locals call their mountain, after we got our assignment. It was amazing to see inside the rock all these prehistoric fossils and shells. I have never seen anything like this before and how they used the stone from the rock for any type of construction in the old town. It was easy to tell they used the rock for the stones because you could also see the fossils and shells from the stones. It was obvious that they took it from the mountain rock. Getting into the studies and seeing how the rock was actually sculpted by the rivers and the sea was fascinating.
Cefalu was a really quiet town and I expected that because during the winter time the town is really quiet and the population is a lot smaller than in the summer. They told me that the population doubles over the summer whereas in Gallipoli it triples, so there were a lot of similarities between the two towns.
Being on a beach at night when we were all together was nice. I was actually sitting on a rock by myself and I kind of forgot I was in Cefalu for the moment. I felt like I was back in Gallipoli. It made me think of my family and how much I miss them. I have never been this far away from them for this long. It was really nice, so quiet, and I just wanted to pass out on the beach. Then I saw “The Rock” lit up and it brought me back to reality.
There were no bad experiences during the entire trip. I can’t complain. I have never done so much traveling and sightseeing in such a short time. It was great. It was really a great experience. I also enjoyed the company a lot.
RYAN DUFFY
Naples
I thought the Galleria was amazing. I remember seeing it in history class in the slides but it was actually amazing to be just there. It was fantastic to look down the side streets and see Mt Vesuvius in the distance. It was our first encounter with a gypsy child which was interesting. You don’t really see that in the US -- young children begging. The people were very nice to us when we sat around and sketched. They came up and asked questions and were so happy that we were so interested in their city. I guess you would say the people were very proud and liked the fact that we were interested in their city. I was happy to experience the restaurant where pizza was created one hundred years ago. I would have to say it was the best pizza I have ever had.
The mosaics in the archeological museum blew me away. From a distance they looked like paintings. It was something I had never seen before. The plan of Pompeii was probably one of the biggest models I have ever seen. It was fun to sit and sketch that. I wished we could have gone and seen Pompeii but I guess seeing the model and the mosaics from Pompeii was the next best thing.
Palermo
I am not really a boat person but I survived the boat trip from Naples to Palermo. I had a philosophical talk with Dan until the early hours of the morning so I didn’t get much sleep. We were discussing the meaning of life. It was a fun night
Palermo was nice city. I didn’t have quite as much fun as in Naples. The people seemed a little more hesitant to talk to Americans but I really enjoyed the day trips. It was cool to see the one tree in Garibaldi park that was the biggest tree in Italy.
Monreale
The cathedral was amazing there. It was great to go in there and sketch and take pictures. Once again you don’t really see that many churches that ornate back at home and also gardens that we visited in the cloisters were very nice.
Segesta
I was surprised by the fact that this Greek temple was just so well maintained and that they decided to leave it alone. I feel like in the US something like that would be overpowered with the built landscape around it. Segesta decided to let it be and not build in the landscape around it. This was really nice. It was interesting to see how people used to build into the landscape because of the threats from invaders. The temple was on top of the mountain which must have been in the past hard to reach.
Erice
Erice was probably my favorite place that we visited. It was somewhat isolated from everything else but the town itself was very developed being so high in elevation. We had great views of the water and the mountains surrounding it. It was really enjoyable to just go down the side streets and sit down and sketch. That is definitely a place I would like to go visit again sometime in my life time.
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Cefalu
Cefalu was another amazing experience. The beach was very clean, very nice. There was a big contrast between the old town and the new town. I was excited that we were going to give some input as to how things could be built and change within the city. Climbing the mountain was really fun. I love sea food so when the town board treated us to dinner, I was happy to take seconds and thirds. I feel like I got a lot closer to everyone on the trip that I didn’t know as well in Cefalu because of all the group dinners and because of all the venturing out at night.
Our project was basically working on the beach front. There isn’t much activity going on along the beach. It is unfortunate since there isn’t much happening around the beach. But it is important to carefully plan out how to build in this area because it seems as if the style of the old town is dying.
At times it was frustrating because of the language barrier but I think that is a good thing. There is a strong sense of culture which is a challenge I am happy to deal with.
I had a great time in Southern Italy. It was nice break from the business involved in Rome but I am glad to get back to Rome in my own way. I hope I have just as good an experience in Northern Italy in a few weeks.
CHRIS EVANS
Naples
I didn’t know much about Naples before coming to the city. The taxi ride from the train station to the hotel was fairly interesting to say the least. It seemed like a combination of stock car racing and I am not sure what else you would call it. I think I used the handle bar on the side of the door more than I ever have in my entire life. The city itself, I thought, was fairly interesting. It is not as bland as Rome. It had some beautiful sections. The Galleria Umberto was just beautiful. It was a great indoor space that you really don’t notice until you were inside of it. The scale of it was amazing. It was just a great space. The Spanish quarter was very different from the other parts of the city. It was cluttered but it had its own personality -- like a beautiful mess. Wandering around the city, some of the sites were beautiful. We didn’t get to go to it, the Castle Nuovo, but it was beautiful and the views from the waterfront overlooking the mountains and the volcano were beautiful.
Palmero
I have to say I liked Palermo more than Naples. It has a smaller feel to it even though it is a fairly large city. The food was great. We went to the same Trattoria two or three times and I had the best gnocci I have ever had. The cathedral, the Duomo, was very interesting with its various facades and additions to it. I also liked the intersection with the four fountains.
One night we went out to dinner and on our way back to the hotel, a few of us decided to stop at a bar called “Drunks”. A couple of drinks turned into many drinks. Some games were played and by the end of the night, the entire bar was playing “flip cup” with us. It was fantastic because it was the first time that I had really been immersed into the Italian culture, hanging out with Italian kids, and trying to speak as much Italian as possible. I have to say it was probably the most fun night I had on this trip. It started with six of us playing and every fifteen minutes we added four more people. By the end of the night there were probably 24 of us. There was a line of about 40 or 50 beer bottles along the table.
Monreale
I think Monreale was probably the most surprising experience I had on the trip. We hadn’t been in the mountains as yet and then not knowing where the town was, it was amazing when you got up there and you caught glimpses of Palermo, the mountains and the sea. It was beautiful. The cathedral itself was fascinating. The cloister was beautiful. The sun had come out from the clouds and the photographs that we took were fantastic. We ate lunch at a small bar overlooking the piazza and it was just nice to look out and see the culture of a smaller town like that.
Segesta
I think we went there on the perfect day because the weather again was perfect. It was beautiful and I would say the best time to see something like that, the temple. Once we reached the top of the hill you could see what seemed like miles. It was something I had seen in text books but to see it in person was amazing. The temple itself seemed like it was still in amazing condition even though it had gone through centuries or wear and tear and had millions of people stomping all over it. It was just great to see something like that.
Erice
I would say when we arrived at Erice, the views from the city overlooking the surrounding area were probably the best on this trip. I wouldn’t call it a small town but a quaint town on the hill. It was obviously a tourist town but it has maintained a great character even though it was pretty empty. A group of us wondered around in what seemed like hours and kind of got lost. We tried to see things that we wouldn’t normally see if we just looked at a map. We climbed walls and went into places we probably were not supposed to be in. We somehow managed to climb a wall into some abandoned property and then took some random road that finally wound up back to the city. The castle overlooking the sea was probably the most interesting part of the city. Not only was it very well preserved and even though you were not allowed to go in it, you still felt like you were experiencing it.
Cefalu
I would say Cefalu was everything I wanted a small Italian town to be. It had a beautiful beach, some great historic architecture and friendly people. It is a city that reminds you of home in that it is a small self-sufficient town that minds its own business. Everyone is living at their own slow pace and yet it still remains an hour and half away from a larger city like Palermo. Dealing with the history part of the project, we got to know a lot about the city. We got to know not only its origins but different aspects that you wouldn’t find out if you were just a normal visitor. I would say the most interesting little historical fact was that on top of “The Rock” (the mountain) there was an arch which had a bell hanging from it. They would ring the bell when they saw pirates coming from the sea. This was the single for all the little children to run up the mountain where they would be safe.
The hike up the mountain or “The Rock” was amazing -- enough to say that I did it twice. The Temple of Diana, it is crazy that it was built in the 5th century BC and the façade still looks exactly as it did back then. We had an interesting run-in with a flock of sheep and its sheep herding dog. We were walking over a hill and then all of a sudden we saw all these sheep. It is just not something you see everyday back in the States.
I guess the crowning moment of the hike was getting to the top where the fortress is and seeing Cefalu, the old city, the new city, the sea and then just the surrounding mountains. It was just fascinating. A great end to the trip.
Overall nothing frustrated me, it was just amazing, the entire trip. I can’t wait to go on the trip up north.
BRIAN FLYNN
Naples
Naples was not too bad. We didn’t spend too much time there. It would have been nicer if the weather had been better. I didn’t think the people were as friendly as the people we have seen in other cities, especially in Rome. Rome is probably the friendliest place that I have been so far. It is probably because we see the most Americans.
I wish I could have seen a little more of the harbor area other than when we got on the ship. I wish we could have gone to Pompeii. I liked the architecture there. I liked the Galleria Umberto and the Spanish Quarter was really interesting too. In the Spanish Quarter you had all the different balconies and you had everyone hanging out their laundry in the streets and there were no tourists there. It felt like this was a real taste of the real Naples away from the main street with all the restaurants, shops and people shopping.
The opera was pretty interesting. The building and the sets were really nice. It would have been better if I had understood the actual opera more. It was, however, a very well done opera even though I couldn’t understand it. It was in opera English with a lady doing a synopsis in Italian.
The museum wasn’t too bad. For a lot of us, it was a rainy day so we had wished the weather had been better and we could have been outside instead of inside but it was interesting to see the model of Pompeii.
Palermo
I wished I had started out the day with more sleep. I didn’t get too much sleep on the SNAV. I went to bed at 12:30. It was a short bed. The next day I felt I was rocking around all day.
Monreale
I would say this was one of my first great photo ops for the trip. I ended up snapping over 100 photographs. When I go back and looked at my photos, they were not the best photos I shot on the entire trip but there were some good ones especially of the views off the mountain looking down at the town of Palermo.
Monreale was actually a nice church. It was actually simpler than I thought it would be. The mosaics were really nice. It was here where I learned to take indoor shots. I had never taken indoor shots with my camera before and amazingly they came out good.
Palermo
The next day was a fun filled day of sketching. I think I filled up more pages than I did all of last semester. It was great to go around and photograph and sketch the buildings. It gave me a much better understanding of the way the buildings were constructed depending on the type of drawing we were doing -- a detail or a section.
We went into the interior of the Duomo which was a lot different than from the outside. It was nice but it needed to be restored. You could see stuff falling off the ceiling. It was nice to see it from the inside. On the outside, it looked like all these mixtures of various types of architecture from different time periods. On the inside, it was a lot simpler than I thought it would be which was probably a good thing.
We had the “milsa” or spleen sandwiches which our professor Dave introduced us to. It was a lot of fun. Most people ate them. Only a few didn’t. It was a pretty good sandwich. It was a new experience. I usually don’t eat that kind of stuff. Here I decided to get rid of my picky aspect of eating and just kind of try different kinds of foods.
Segesta
Segesta was a really cool place. I wasn’t sure what it was going to look like. I had never seen ruins like that before. Most of the ruins in Rome are almost destroyed. I got some great shots of the Greek Temple. From the top, there were some nice views of the surrounding mountains and the landscape. There were a lot of vineyards along the side of the hills and in the area. From Segesta we hopped on the bus and went to Erice. It was a nice bus. It was a good idea that we all were on the same bus. Actually everybody just passed out and went to sleep. We were too tired from our full days of sketching .
Erice
It was a fun drive up the mountain. We wound up a narrow road, back and forth, back and forth, Around each corner the bus driver would toot his horn to make sure no one was coming in the opposite direction. Once we got up to the top of the mountain and we got off the bus, we were released by “Emperor Hallet” to go and sketch the city and get some shots.
We had about three hours up in Erice. The first thing we did was walk around the city to get an idea of where things were and then we got some lunch. From there we ended up by the cathedral area but we couldn’t get in. It was too late. We walked over to the castle by the cliff’s edge. There were some really great views of Trapani. You could also see a lot of Sicily from up there and a lot of the Mediterranean Sea. After looking around for a while, we sat down and sketched. That night we went back to Palermo and rested. Some people rented scooters.
Cefalu
The ride to Cefalu wasn’t too bad. It was really nice driving along the Mediterranean the whole time. The bus dropped us right off at our hotel. Dave gave us our keys and then gave us fifteen minutes to be downstairs. We walked as a class to the main part of the old city. This was our first time walking down by the water. It was first time seeing the city. It was very interesting but when you walk around as a big group you stick out like a sore thumb especially in a small town like Cefalu. The first night we pretty much hung out, ate dinner and went to bed.
The next day we had the meeting with all the officials of Cefalu. I think a lot of the information there was lost in translation but it was nice to finally meet everybody. We were introduced to the history and the geography of the town. Then we went on a walking tour through the main part of the town. The historian of Cefalu led the tour and he described the basic history of the town and what we needed to know for the project.
We split into our groups and went off and started sketching and analyzing our sections. Our group was the one that did the piazzas -- the main piazza in front of the cathedral and then down the street to the Piazza Garibaldi. We pretty much split our time up and spent time in each spot sketching and getting pictures. We were trying to figure out how we were going to present the information. I were trying to gather as much information as we could before coming back to Rome when we would no longer be able to go and take more photographs or do more sketches. So this was pretty important.
We went to work in the studio space that Cefalu had given to us for a couple of days. We started working on laying out how our boards were going to look and how our drawings would be put on the boards. This particular day we were trying to finish up as much as we could since I think we had a pin up that day. After that we got dinner and relaxed for a bit.
One of the nights, we walked along the beach. We actually took off our shoes and walked in the water. It was really nice. It was cold at first but it wasn’t too bad considering it was February.
The next day, by order of Mama Hallet, we met at 10:30 instead of 9:00 even though a bunch of us tried to get in earlier to get a jump start. We pretty much tried to get as much done as we could by noon in our sketch books and on the wall because the Mayor of Cefalu was coming to see our work. We kept working for a few more hours laying things out. It was interesting to see the mayor. She was very rushed. She was just in and out. I thought it was funny. Here you were working to get things done and then she came and hardly stayed. We took a group photo but only about a quarter of the class was in it. At least we got published in the local newspaper.
We went back to the hotel before going to dinner. This was the dinner that the town of Cefalu paid for. We had to walk all the way up into the new section of the city to a restaurant overlooking the water. It was actually a very nice restaurant with very good service and good food.
The next day we met up in the studio and worked for about three hours in the morning before going up to the mountain. The mountain was awesome. It was much shorter hike up than I thought it would be. It was also a much smaller mountain than I thought it would be. I guess when there is nothing else around it looks huge. Dave and I got off one of the paths and we walked along the wall above the church. We had beautiful views of Cefalu. It was a really nice day. It was perfect for photographs. From there we walked all the way around the mountain, along the cliff’s edge. We then met up with Judy and climbed the rest of the way up the mountain to the very top.
My favorite day was the day when we went up to the top of “The Rock” as they call their mountain. Cefalu for me was the most beautiful city we were in.
It was a really good trip. It was a lot longer and most intensive than I ever would have expected which was really good. It was a great way to see southern Italy especially having Stanley and Dave with us. They were our tour guides. It was really a good trip. I can’t wait for the Northern Italy trip now.
LAUREN GOETZ
Naples
The taxi cab ride from the train station was crazy. He swerved in and out of lanes and I actually thought we were going to hit a bus. I actually talked to the taxi cab driver. He spoke English and we were asking if “saldi” (The sales) were still happening. He didn’t really understand “saldi” because we said it incorrectly. He was very nice and he showed us where our hotel was. There was so much traffic, we couldn’t get out in front of our hotel.
I went to the opera. It was very enjoyable. I understood the storyline even though the narrator didn’t speak English. It was very interesting, It was very modern. I have been to a few operas but nothing quite like this one. We sat in a box seat and the opera house was very beautiful. I took a lot of pictures of it so I could remember what it looked like.
I heard about the girls getting egged which wasn’t very good but I could see that it could happen to someone. We went out that night after dinner to this one street that had lots of bars and restaurants where we met some interesting people. Rose, Lauren, Connie and I met these three guys in one of the bars. The one man was apparently the number one bowler in Naples. The other one was a policeman and the third one was a student. They told us that they had been friends for many years. They were very forward. The student asked Connie where our hotel was. Rose asked him: “Why are you asking that?” This was all in Italian so they told Rose to stop talking because they said she knew too much of the language. We finally just left and went back to the hotel.
The next day we went to the archeological museum. I liked the museum. The Pompeii models were very interesting and detailed to look at. And I loved the mosaics from Pompeii. They were really interesting. I took pictures of the mosaics but they all came out blurred. I must have moved everything. I was so bummed.
Palermo
In Palermo I loved the hotel. I think it was my favorite hotel. It was very old. Our room had very high ceilings and a nice balcony. We had a little sitting area right outside our door and that is where we ate dinner two of the nights. Rose and I went to a video arcade the second night which was a lot of fun.
On the first day we went up to Monreale on the bus. I loved the Cathedral in Monreale. It was so huge and the walls and the ceilings were decorated so elaborately. I felt so small in such a big space. I loved how a lot of the beams were painted gold and the archways above the columns were also painted in gold. I got a lot of pictures of the nurses who were also nuns who were there on a pilgrimage with their sick patients hoping to be healed.
The cloisters were also elaborately decorated. It was very peaceful sitting in the long arcade and drawing details of the space. I really enjoyed how when you walked around the perimeter you could see bits and pieces of the cathedral poking out through the arcade. It was a very sunny day and I think that added to how beautiful it was.
The second day we went to the Teatro Maximo. We drew a section of the building looking at the relationship of the landscape to the cathedral. I wished we could have stayed there longer but I took enough pictures to hopefully get a good sense of how the space works. Then we went to the Four Corners Intersection. We didn’t stay there too long because it was congested but it was fascinating to see how at one time how elaborate and decorative they made this intersection.
Afterwards we walked to the Duomo. There we drew the façade. I drew the entrance which had apparently had four different styles of architecture --Norman, Arab, Renaissance and Byzantine. There were also little kids that were there to protest the war. They were so cute waving their home-made banners. As they walked into the Duomo, I followed in behind them and I couldn’t believe that they filled up the entire Duomo. Then I ended up leaving because I didn’t want to intrude on their service.
At the open air market, I did eat the spleen sandwich but it wasn’t as good as I thought it would be. I guess it wasn’t bad either. Rose and I walked around the market and I saw the biggest sword fish I had ever seen in my life.
Segesta
It was a beautiful bus ride up to Segesta and I remember taking pictures on the bus of the countryside. When we arrived we climbed up the hill to the Greek temple and that was a perfect opportunity to take pictures because no one else was there. After about twenty minutes it was pretty amazing to see the sun come out over the temple and see the shadows hitting the columns. I got a good picture there.
On the way back down the hill, Rose, Judy and I saw a flock of sheep. It was pretty interesting to watch all the sheep being herded up another hill.
Erice
The bus ride up to Erice was absolutely gorgeous. Even though I am afraid of heights, I still looked out the window and took many pictures. When we arrived at the top of the mountain, I climbed up the first road I saw with Rose and Adam trying to find a restaurant. After about the fourth restaurant that we went to, we found one that was open. The food at this restaurant was probably the best meal I have had in Italy so far. I had pasta with tomato sauce for the first course, and then veal and then tiramisu for dessert.
After eating Adam, Rose and I snuck into a Franciscan monastery which was very old and had a lot of good textures on the walls. There was ivy growing up the walls. All different kinds of stones were used to construct the monastery. After looking around inside, we actually saw people restoring a portion of the inside. So we ran out. We decided to start our drawing of the street. I drew one of the main streets down the center of the mountain. I think it turned out pretty well.
Cefalu
After arriving at our hotel, we took a walk down the promenade to the old part of Cefalu. That day we had perfect sunlight for taking photographs. I couldn’t believe how beautiful Sicily really was. We walked to the Duomo in the middle of the old town and I was able to make my way around the city.
The next day we met up with Giuseppe Di Nicola and the Cefalu government people. They gave us a brief summery about the history of Cefalu. This meeting really helped the historical group which I am in for the project. Then we were taken around the city. We saw one of the oldest doors in the town which wasn’t a door but a walkway. It used to be one of the gates to the city. It overlooked the sea and the rocks that are around Sicily.
The next day we were taken to our studio space and we started to work out our assignments. Since I am in the history group we decided to hike up the rock of Cefalu. It only took us about an hour even though we ended up going off the trail and started just climbing up the rocks. It was really difficult since I had my purse with me, and to top it off, we had to walk back to the hotel first before climbing the mountain since I didn’t have my tennis shoes on. Once we made it to the top, we saw a magnificent panoramic view of Cefalu and of all the other small towns and, of course, the sea. I am really not that afraid of heights but when it comes to looking over a cliff and there is nothing holding you back, then it is scary. So when I was hiking up, I just didn’t look down. The rocks were pretty supportive to holding me up, so I wasn’t too afraid. I was, nevertheless, the last one to make it to the top in our group.
The rest of the week was very beautiful and we had great weather to sit out on the beach and draw the landscape. We also met up with some of the students from the university who were studying to be tour guides. They wanted to practice their English because they had a test on the following Tuesday.
All in all it was a pretty interesting and educational trip.
SPIRO GIANNIOTIS
Naples
I really liked the interplay with the balconies and how they almost touched. It seemed like a very intimate city. Walking around Naples and just interacting with all the people was a culture shock because everyone was so happy and so friendly. It was the friendliest city I have ever been to. Sitting down and sketching really gave me another level of appreciation of Naples. You could really take everything in and focus on the detail on every level than if you were just passing by. Walking into the Galleria Umberto was almost overwhelming. The grandeur and scale of the structure was unbelievable and then there were the huge glass roofs. It was one of my favorite inside/outside experiences. It could be taken either way. There were shops and little galleries along the side of it. The two central axis were so strong leading you to either side of the two busy streets.
I liked the large square with the fake Pantheon although other people bashed it since it was a mix of the real Pantheon and St Peters in Rome. It did seem too grand for its location. There wasn’t really a place to sit down in the piazza. There was just one big open space. One of my Roman friends, before we came here, told me of a little game to play when we got to this fake Pantheon. You had to close your eyes, disorient yourself and then someone would take you and point you straight in between the two horse statues in front of the Pantheon which were about 60 feet apart. Then you would have to walk a straight line through the statues towards the front steps of the Pantheon. It seemed very easy but no one could do it. Everyone would go way left or way right. This was because of the uneven cobblestones. Owen was the worst of all of us. He would just walk around in circles with his eyes closed. We took pictures of this.
We had a great dinner at this hundred year old restaurant. We all had a great time. We laughed, ate, drank and all were amused by Stanley’s infamous humor. After that, all our friends went out for a night on the town.
Palermo
The boat was an experience on it own. We went to the cabin and our cabin was ten cubic feet for four people. It was a tight squeeze but we managed to stick the night out. We had wrestling matches and slap box fights to help entertain us throughout the long overnight journey.
After arriving in Palermo at six in the morning, we had to drag our suitcases a mile and a half up hill to get to our hotel. But the hotel was very nice and we checked in and were ready to begin out day.
Getting on the bus to the church in Monreale, I had no idea of the experience I was in store for. I had such an amazing experience not only through the architecture of the church and but also seeing those nurses and nuns caring and helping all the needy people at the Mass at the church. I felt so touched just watching these nuns take care all of these people whole heartedly and without hesitation. It was almost like God was in the church. It inspired me to sit down and say a prayer for my family and friends. I know that my prayer will come true because I felt such presence and such goodness.
Then we went into the garden cloisters. It was really great. The best part of the garden was the perimeter of the columns enclosing the garden. Each column was so detailed and each capitol had a different sculpture on it -- whether it was animals, people or mythical creatures. We sat down there and drew a section of the garden, the columns and the walkway that surrounded them.
The next day we went to the Palermo Cathedral. It had a million styles of architecture all compiled into one structure. It was the most interesting building I have seen on this trip. It was an interesting concept to see how all the styles worked together and flowed in and out of each other. This was also the place where I got attacked by eight little eighth grade Italian school girls. It was fun watching all my friends laughing at me and having all these little eighth graders not let go of me. One of them even gave me a charm bracelet and this was all in Italian! We finally parted our ways and I sketched the inside of the cathedral.
One night we had the great idea of renting scooters. Joey, Marco and I rented scooters and scooted around town for about five hours exploring most of the coast line and taking some great pictures. At about 8 we decided to stop and have dinner in a town that seemed untouched by tourism. The meals were inexpensive and delicious. As we proceeded to go back to our scooters, to call it an evening and go home, Marco’s scooter wouldn’t start. So he had to hop on the back of one of ours and his scooter got towed back the next morning.
The next day we went to the Teatro Massimo which we never got to go inside of so we sat outside and drew a section of the relationship between the theater, the street and the shops and houses across the street. Then the group went on a walking tour and Eleni and I got separated from the bunch and had to find our own way to the park where we were supposed to be sketching. We finally got there with 20 minutes left in the day and completely out of breath.
Segesta
We went to a Greek temple which I took great pride in gloating about especially to Marco. The temple was sitting on top of a hill with millions of colorful flowers surrounding it. It was a very surreal experience.
Erice
Erice was one of my favorites towns. It is one of the oldest towns in Italy and Owen and I decided to go and explore every crevice of the place. So we put our backpacks on, tied our shoe laces, and hiked to the top of the mountain where we found a huge castle. Unfortunately the doors of the castle were locked but we took great pictures and sketched for about an hour and a half. The view from the castle was incredible. We could see all of Sicily from the mountains to the sea. But that wasn’t enough for Owen and me, we wanted to get inside of the castle. We put our bags down and contemplated a way to scale the castle walls. We climbed as far as Owen could but he couldn’t go any further so I decided to climb around the edge of the castle looking hundreds of feet down to jagged rocks at the bottom. Before I could go any further, my mother’s voice popped into my head screaming at me to get back to safety. That was as far as we could go without serious repercussions. Thanks Mom!
Cefalu
Cefalu was the most fun I have had on this trip. It was such a complete experience involving architecture, friends, exploration of the city and a dip in the sea. Meeting the mayor and working in the mayor’s office felt so prestigious, it gave all of us the initiative to give it 100%. The project and the challenge that my group had to tackle was understanding and researching the morphology from the sea, to the beach, to the rocks, to the start of the city. It was very interesting to see how the rocks grew from the earth and became part of the buildings. Our studies included drawing sections of a typical house in Cefalu, to drawing sections through the oldest port in Cefalu and to the ancient laundry place where they women used to wash their clothes. Here they used the water from the mountain that came streaming down into the laundry place then drained out through a cove to the sea.
Getting all this information and compiling it into our boards and research truly gave us an understanding of Cefalu and its ancient and modern culture. After our work in Cefalu was done, the mayor’s office took us out for a great dinner to show her appreciation of all our hard work and our attempt to give back to her community.
Our last day in Cefalu we pretty much had to ourselves which we took full advantage of. First thing in the afternoon we went through the open air market and got some lunch. Then we went back to the hotel and put on our bathing suits and got ready for a great day at the beach. The water was cold but easy to get used to after your limbs got numb. After wrestling and body surfing in the sea, we got out and actually had a chance to sun bathe. We also played soccer and stick ball on the beach. After a couple of hours on the beach, we wanted to explore the other side of Cefalu and hiked up the mountain. By the time we reached the top, it was dusk and we had a chance to take beautiful pictures as the sun was setting over the timeless city of Cefalu. We decided it was time to go when we couldn’t see five steps in front of us but then Owen and John had the great idea of scaling down a cave. So we proceeded to open a creaky metal door and started our decent into the cave. Down there, you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. It was so scary but luckily John had a flickering, dim flashlight and led the way. Twenty to thirty feet down into the cave we mutually agreed to stop. Everyone seemed a little hesitant and nervous to continue. So I took it upon myself to scare the shit out of everyone down there. I made a loud roaring noise and watched Owen jump higher than I have ever seen him jump before. After that we all agreed to leave. (In reality, I was the one the most scared during our adventure into the cave.) We hiked down the mountain, got some great dinner, met up with our friends, and talked about the great adventure we had that day.
All in all this trip was a great opportunity to see the culture and architecture of southern Italy. It was also a great eye opening experience to get closer to everyone in our program because of our dependence on everyone for our groups. I really enjoyed this trip and I am very appreciative of all the great experiences and new knowledge that I have obtained from traveling down south with 27 great individuals.
VIKKI KULBICK
Naples
When we got to Naples I was really excited because I thought it was different from Rome. People seemed to be more lively and I felt that the Spanish Quarter was just incredible. I think the Spanish Quarter was my favorite part of Naples. I thought that the way the balconies and the buildings interacted was really interested because of the amount of space that was left. It was not quite a street but people could still travel through it with small cars and the “motorinos”. The next thing that we looked at was the Galleria. My first impression was that it was an interior space that felt like an exterior space because of the glass ceiling. Then after spending time in it, you could understand how crucial the space actually was and it was hard to believe that it wasn’t more crowded.
We went to the opera. It was was OK. I liked the opera theater itself. Theater design is one of my interests. I like everything about theaters. I didn’t think the opera itself, Candide, was that good. It was different from the theaters that I have been to back home. Here all the balconies helped define the room itself without taking away from the people who were sitting on the ground level. Everyone had an equal opportunity to see what was going on stage. The box where we all sat was a lot of fun because it was personal and intimate. If you go to a normal theater, like I have been in the past, it is harder to be in a group and interact with one another. In the box we were able to help interpret what was going on during the opera and discuss what we thought of this particular opera production.
The next day we went to the archeological museum. Even though the models of Pompeii were very interesting, I couldn’t quite grasp quite the feeling of the space so it was slightly disappointing to not be able to see the real Pompeii. The museum was still interesting and seeing the mosaics from Pompeii was pretty neat because of how small the pieces were and how they actually looked like a painting from afar but were actually mosaics.
That night it was our first ship experience. The rooms were small and ours was particularly warm but all in all it was different to experience that and that made it fun.
Palermo
At first I was kind of nervous because I felt less comfortable in Palermo than I did in Naples. Once we had started to get into the day and we went to see Monreale it helped to prove that Palermo wasn’t as bad as I had originally thought. The cathedral in Monreale was incredible. To see how the structure interacted with its surroundings was amazing. It seemed like such a small town and yet this large place of worship was just planted in the center. The views of the surrounding cities and towns from that point on the mountain side were breath taking.
Then we had the rest of the afternoon to wonder in Palermo. We walked down to what they would consider their promenade by the water and watched the people interact with the space.
The next day we saw the cathedral of Palermo. It was interesting to see how the court yard was used by so many different people over the centuries. There were people chatting with friends. There were people eating their lunches. We just blended in as we all were sketching the exterior. Later on we went to Park Garibaldi where the large trees were. So many different trunks from a single tree were just sprouting from the ground. They said it was the largest tree in Italy. It was this huge gathering of plants and people that all mixed together. It just created this beautiful picture. It makes you appreciate nature.
Segesta
I was impressed by the way the temple had been preserved. It was amazing how such an old structure could still be standing for thousands of years . It was really peaceful there. It was good to sketch and get a feel for something that old because we don’t see anything like that back home. There are no Greek temples. There is nothing that has withstood that expanse of time.
Erice
I loved it. It felt like we were walking into this old movie set. I think that helped peak my interest. It was completely different from anything that I had seen so far. It was so quiet that you wondered if there were really people that lived there. You could also look down to Trapani and see where they harvest the salt. It is just this grid of water that appears to sit in the middle of land. It almost felt like we were on a mountain side in Ireland.
We took a few pictures of the architecture and the way the structures compliment one another. I think we actually took more pictures of the landscape from the top of the towers at the castle than the architecture.
Cefalu
I was really excited when we got to Cefalu because the whole time that we were in Palermo I was hoping to see some beach -- just like a resort area -- and Cefalu was that for me. I don’t want that to sound bad because it is not like the resorts back home but it reminded me of the shore line that we go to every summer in New Jersey. The architecture is obviously different but the purpose for the town is the same.
I worked on the history of Cefalu. It was interesting to learn how the whole city went from being a prehistoric community to what it is today. It was interesting to watch how the rock is used in so many different ways by the different cultures that had at one point inhabited the town. For the Romans they used it as a wall for protection. Technically it has always been used for protection but that was how the town started.
We also learned about how important the history of the town was to its people. They seemed very proud to be where they were from. Every time we would meet someone new, they would ask: “Isn’t Cefalu beautiful?” “Isn’t this such a great place?” And of course our answer would always be: “Yes”. I remember saying at one point while we were there that I could see myself staying in Cefalu.
One of the most memorable moments of our time in Cefalu was the first day when we climbed to the top of the mountain. Maureen, Ryan, Chris and I managed to make it to the top with little difficulty. I complained a bit but the satisfaction after reaching the peak make me feel pretty bad about all my complaining. I could see how the newer section of the town really worked from that vantage point. And to see the ruins that were left from the Norman fort and castle was kind of humbling, Sometimes we take for granted the advances that we have made since their time period hundreds of years ago. It made me wonder what it would be like to live back then. And I wondered if I would have managed to survive.
I think one of the more frustrating aspects during our stay in Cefalu was not knowing where to start with our projects. And that was mainly the first day. We didn’t really know what exactly we should be looking at or where we could find it. But once we talked to the historian, Nikko and had Stanley translate, we could see how the history of the city unfolded and we had a much better sense of what we needed to show.
The trip overall was really exhausting. Even with the eight hours of sleep I had every night, I was still exhausted from the constant moving and working but overall it was a good experience. I am not sure I would have ever made it to Southern Italy if it weren’t for the program.
ROSE LUCAS
Naples
People were very friendly in Naples. Everybody seemed willing to help out. It seemed like a very safe city. The men in Naples are a lot prettier than in Rome -- but they are a lot more forward. They say: “Caio bella”. The hotel was very nice. It was the best hotel we stayed in during our trip. The view from the top where we had breakfast was spectacular.
The Galleria was really impressive to me. Stanley said it was designed as a street but covered. I had never seen anything like that before. I really liked the flooring pattern. There were a lot of small details that at first glance you would miss. There were circular pieces of glass which at first looked like a frosted glass circle but then when you looked closer, it had a floral iron grate underneath it.
I did like the opera. It was a very modern opera, Candide. It was sort of difficult to understand even though they sang in English but the synopsis during the opera was in Italian. It was interesting that we got box seats. I wasn’t expecting that. Normally it would be tier seating and it was very reasonable with our student discount.
Palermo
The food in Palermo was amazing. Everything was really fresh. Our hotel was in a really good location. It had a pizzeria, a bakery and a grocery store really close by. So a couple of nights, the two Laurens and I would get some bread and cheese and just sit out on the patio overlooking the garden and eat our dinner.
Monreale
The amount of detail that they put into the mosaics was just spectacular. The little cloister courtyard was also very beautiful. I liked the incorporation of plants in the courtyard and how they planned the height of them and how they matched the more solid elements like the stone walls.
We poked around a lot. We played Italian video games in a local arcade. We went to the Garibaldi Gardens and climbed the largest tree in Italy. Judy bought us tangerines. They were the best tangerines that I have eaten since I have been here.
The market was an interesting experience -- everything was fresh obviously -- but for instance, in the fish area, they were cutting this giant sword fish into one inch slices and they had the head on display. The man who sold us the spleen sandwiches in the old market didn’t have his pointer finger. But the spleen sandwiches were very good.
We also bought fresh strawberries, fragolini (little strawberries) for one euro.
We saw a peace protest. I asked one of the older students why they were protesting and they said they were protesting against a war that took place a long time ago and they were protesting in general for peace. There were at least 200 students. They let me take their picture and they had banners and they let me take their pictures. One student came up and told me he liked my hair. He said “Fouxie” or died hair. He posed for a picture. He posed with me -- he was like 12 years old. He was very cute.
Erice
It was very quiet. It was one of those towns in the horror movies where there is nobody in the whole town. All the people stood outside and then immediately went into their shops to wait for us to go into the shops. It seemed by accident that we ended up eating in the only open restaurant in Erice. It was a three course meal for 15 euros. It was very good.
Adam and I climbed a forty foot wall and walked around it until it got so narrow we were going to fall off. We were surprised at the number of stray animals in the town. We saw some kittens and dogs who followed us around.
Cefalu
It was slightly disorganized. Italian reality is equivalent to American reality only in theory. When Italians say something is going to happen, it doesn’t always happen or certainly not on time.
We climbed the mountain the second day we were there and I climbed it with all the boys. It was very funny. The view up there was spectacular. It was nice from being at the bottom to going to the top -- the reverse. It wasn’t what I expected the way Stanley had depicted it. I thought the mountain would be giant and be the only mountain there but there were a lot of other mountains behind it. It was fun walking from our hotel everyday -- a nice mile hike. I remember Dave said that we were staying at The Tourist Hotel and I thought he was joking but he wasn’t -- that was the name of our hotel.
The beach was beautiful. I rolled up my pants and walked with my bare feet in the water. I wasn’t as crazy as some of the boys who actually went swimming in the water. We met three Italian girls who were very nice and invited us to their home for dinner. When we got to their place, they gave us a tour of their apartment. They had a three bedroom apartment that they had rented with two of the bedrooms opening out onto a patio that overlooked the water and the rocks. Their apartment was about one and half times the size of our ten person apartment in Rome and only three people lived there. They made us “bruchetti” and “pigs in a blanket” and they had a quiche for an antipasto. Then they made us pasta with fresh sea food. Afterwards they served us fresh coffee. After dinner one of the girls brought us her English book and asked us for help with one of the tenses she was trying to learn. Lauren and I realized that English is very hard and we actually didn’t get all the answers right. They were working on the “have been” and they asked us about when to use “a lot” and “lots”.
I think the best part of our stay in Cefalu was the night the mayor’s office treated us all to a special dinner. It was the best meal we have had since we have been in Italy. It was nice eating with everybody and joking and talking. The worst part of our time in Cefalu was probably not knowing when things were going to happen. I like to have time frames in my mind.
The entire trip was a very good experience. The cities were beautiful. The men were very nice. Pretty much everybody was very friendly. The further south you go, the better the food tastes. I even ate seafood and liked it. A rare feat for me.
CONNIE MAGNUSON
Naples
One of my favorite songs is “Mambo Italiano” by Rosemary Clooney. The first two lines of the song are “A girl went back to Napoli because she missed the scenery”. So I was listening to that song on the train and getting myself in the mood for Napoli. I definitely had the experience the song portrays of the city. It was a fast paced city with a great Italian attitude of just enjoying life and being carefree and I loved that.
I think the greatest section of Napoli was the Spanish quarter. It made me think I was back in the 1950s and I wanted to listen to all the Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin songs. It is one of those places you need to visit. A photograph can’t capture it. No matter how good the lighting when you take the photograph, it is definitely a city you have to experience in person. The architecture of Napoli is beautiful and adds to the character of the city but it hasn’t been maintained that well. The people have however maintained their culture and the attitude of Napoli which makes the city very alive. I am very happy to see that there is a movement to preserve the architecture. It is underway. I will certainly be coming back to Napoli.
The boat we took from Naples to Palermo was a perfect example of what hell would be like on earth stuck between two heavens, Sicily and Naples. Tight confines, a really bad piano player, only five channels of Italian television going on forever and very sleazy Italian truck drivers. It was certainly an experience.
Palermo
What was my impression of Palermo? It was definitely an eclectic city. I didn’t put myself out in the city as much but it wasn’t a very inviting city. It was kind of -- perhaps a transitional city -- definitely a port city, but the architecture that we did see particularly the cathedral and the opera house were good. To me that is what made the city, there were great pieces of particular architecture stuck in a not a very well defined city.
Monreale
It is just one of those great tourist towns that everyone needs to visit. The views are impeccable. I feel it is a great introduction to the Sicilian landscape. I adored the cloister and the Duomo. Even as touristy as the city might have been, I felt as though they have done a very good job of maintaining its true character without conforming to your stereotypical touristy town.
Segesta
Segesta was truly exciting. It was my first Greek structure that I had ever seen. I was slightly disappointed that the scale of the building wasn’t as great as I had expected a Greek structure to be. Standing there, I understood what our history professor was saying the other day that the Greeks build in a space taking in context the landscape and the Romans capture it interiorly.
Erice
I adore this town. It was probably the first place where I felt I was having the true Italian experience of eating good food, meeting very, very friendly people and having the best opportunities to use the very little Italian I know to communicate with the townspeople. It was such a charming place and I hope it is one of those places that doesn’t become too touristy that it gets ruined. It has such a great character about it, it shouldn’t be corrupted. The views were impeccable. It is a great feeling when you feel you are walking through a post card shot every moment as you turn each corner.
I got a tour of the castle and I made friends with one of the guys who spoke very little English, if that, and was so pleased that I was insistent on speaking my little Italian and not English. He invited me in for a café for free. The shops that I went into were also so friendly. They gave me free post cards and discounts because I was using my Italian. There was one shop where I was intrigued to go in because it had a bunch of cats coming out of it. I walked in and they had all the quilts that are famous in Erice. Behind the main shop was a room where the owner’s wife was actually using the old loom. I was asking her if I could take a photograph in Italian and her son was in the room with her. He was on the computer and he asked me where I was from in Italian. I was happy to learn that the woman actually had an exhibition of her work in NYC every year. Her son was telling me in English how his mother made her quilts and showing me the quilts and pulling more from the next room behind the workshop -- actually their apartment. I looked into the apartment and saw 8 cats that the owner was feeding. They were all sitting there next to a little furnace fire place. They all were running around. One was sitting near the woman who was weaving. She was telling me the names of the cats and how they were related to one another. This was the grandmother etc. I wanted to buy a postcard but they insisted that I have the postcard for free. “You speak Italian. Send us one of the pictures you took of us.”
Cefalu
I was very eager to get to Cefalu. After seeing the pictures that Stanley took last year, it made me very excited to see the town. I didn’t realize that we would get to know the town that much, that we could get that intimate with the town in the four days that we were there. The townspeople were great. They were eager to tell us about how proud they were of their “citadina” of Cefalu. The town was so rich in its history. It made me want to find out about the history of every town in Sicily but, unfortunately, there is just not enough time to do everything. I certainly want to go back to Cefalu at a different season -- certainly during the peak summer season and see if it changes or keeps its very welcoming spirit.
I am so excited for the project that we are going to get to work on because the townspeople are so proud of their city and the evolution that it has had and to think we are now part of that is a very genuine feeling. It’s not the thing that most architectural students get to experience to feel that they can be a part of something -- a building process -- before they have that architectural license. I hope to get back to the town. I hope I give to the town something that will add to their pride of their “citadina”.
My project is the urban design. I was in the chaos group showing how the city has lost some of its organizational structure when leaving the city walls which was very evident when we hiked up the mountain.
The walk from the town to the hotel was very frustrating because it was long. It made you realize that the city has so much they haven’t developed. There is so much they need to improve. There is a lot to improve upon.
I think Sicily is very genuine. The people are very sincere. Yes, the men are forward but it’s a very true experience of what Italy is all about. It is very untouched. It is still very raw. It is certainly one of top places I will suggest to people to visit.
DAN MAYO
Naples
I thought that Naples had some similar qualities to Rome but it was -- I wouldn’t say more grungy -- but more real in that it was not essentially geared to tourists. It is really the little things that define the different cities. Even the pizzas are different in each city. The people in each city we visited all seemed to have such pride for their city. People really define themselves through their cities. They take it to heart. I believe the little things can really shape the larger picture.
In the archeological museum, I appreciated the mosaics and the time it took to make those pieces. It was like when I saw the Pantheon at night in Rome. You hear about these things and study these things but then you see it for the first time and it is like “Wow”. I remember I actually went up and hugged one of the columns at the Pantheon.
In Naples, I remember that it was raining. And again it was the little things that I noticed --even the graffiti on the walls was different than in Rome. Seeing the fake Pantheon in the middle of the city was sort of interesting because it was not in a human scale. I went back at night with some friends and we decided to spin each other around and then we had to walk with our eyes closed to see if we could make it to the façade of the Pantheon. We had to open our eyes and orient ourselves. We also watched some kids play soccer in the large space.
The Spanish Quarter reinforced my perception of Naples that it was not a city geared for tourists but rather for the people of Naples. They live their lives and you really feel that. They hang their clothes in the streets. You see people hanging their clothes out to dry in Rome but here it is everywhere.
While we were in the Galleria, a guy with a bad leg must have come up to me at least six times looking at my sketch book. It was difficult to ignore him. I can understand people being curious and looking over your shoulder but this guy was annoying.
We got on the SNAV, the boat to Palermo. This was my first big boat ride. Coming to Rome was the first time I had ever been on an airplane. And now I was on a big boat for the first time. It kind of resembled a fun house with all the mirrors, the aqua-marine colors and the retro 1970s chairs in the café. Everything was so brightly colored and yet there was no one around. It was a mixture of “The Love Boat” and the “The Shining”. We took some cool pictures on the boat.
We had to get off the boat around 5:00 in the morning so Duffy, John Peragallo and I decided to stay up as much as we could and discuss life in general. It was a philosophical conversation about certain peoples perspective on philosophy. What has been nice about this trip, a definite plus, has been the fact that we have been able to get to know one other as a group.
Palermo
Palermo was sort of similar to Napoli. The first day we went to Monreale with its Byzantine church. I remember making a comment about this particular space that I certainly appreciated it for its context and for the time when it was built but I feel this space could have been a lot more successful if they had emphasized more the material of the building rather than the decoration. I much prefer Gothic architecture with its emphases on light. In this case, I feel they tried to hide what the building was made of.
We went to the cloisters which was really cool with all its little columns. It was amazing to see how each column was different. It was a beautiful day and the shots came out really nice.
Back in Palermo we went to the Four corners intersection which was nice. It was interesting to see an artistic element in a big city. It was surprising to see that -- to come across it randomly. It was a nice little surprise.
The Palermo Cathedral was essentially a collage of different architectural elements. I think it kind of works. Palermo was a port city and every culture threw their own flavor into this cathedral. Sketching the interior was a lot more easy to do because I could understand what was going on. It was redone and I could see the logic behind it whereas with the exterior there was no order to it but, oddly, it worked. No order became order. While we were there, a peace parade passed by with little children protesting for peace. I was sketching outside and all of sudden the children came into the square.
I did eat the spleen sandwich in the open air market even though I am a vegetarian in the States. I think I would kick myself forever if I didn’t try and experience Italian food. So I ate it. It was crunchy at points. The guy had a big plastic bag of spleen and he would reach in the bag and take out a piece of spleen and put in a big metal container with water and it magically cooked and we all ate it.
Segesta
On the bus ride to Segesta it was very stuffy inside the bus so when we got out I decided not to take my jacket and it was cool. The sun did come out and it was good weather and I got some good shots. It was interesting to see a Greek Temple after seeing so much Roman architecture. The temple was beautiful sitting on the hilltop.
Erice
What was really amazing, after a long bus ride, was to suddenly see Erice. It was awe inspiring. It was like a little maze. I liked it being deserted. I thought it must be interesting for Stanley who saw it in the summer when it was packed and then to see it now in the winter when it is deserted. It is interesting to see such a contrast. I liked walking through the city. It was almost maze-like and intimate, The streets were a lot smaller and it seemed very real since it was so well preserved. It had a personal feel to it. I know in the summer I would probably be disappointed when it is filled with so many people. In the winter it was like my own personal town. You really can’t believe places like this exist. Rome would never be like this. It would always be busy.
Cefalu
My first impression was the fact that we stayed at the Hotel Tourist. It is kind of funny how a hotel would name itself Hotel Tourist. “A”, people don’t like tourists and “B”, people don’t like to be tourists. My fondest for Cefalu was with the beach. It was quiet and calm and you could skip rocks. The water made for nice photographs.
Our group was geology. We had to research the topography-- everything before man arrived, how the rock formed and how the plates formed.
The second day we climbed the mountain. It was a small group. I was with Marco, Eleni (Sashi) and Lauren Getz. We had to document the vegetation. We took a lot of pictures of the plants and ourselves. At one point we lost the path and we had to climb using bits and pieces of the rock. We definitely were off the path. So when we got to the top, it was definitely a sense of accomplishment. Lauren was especially proud of herself since she is afraid of heights.
The funny thing about all of Italy is that everything I see could be on a post card. Everything I see is so photogenic. It is really hard for me to grab the concept that I am really here because everything is so picture perfect. Maybe I have seen these places in photographs, and maybe it is subconscious in the back of my mind, but once I am seeing these places in reality, it is unreal.
The only negative part of Cefalu, which wasn’t necessarily about our work, but rather I felt sometimes like the group was on display. We had our own little room that sort of resembled a stage. I understood it was part of the game of why we were there but it was almost distracting. Let us do what we came here to do and we will give you something really nice. You don’t have to look at it so closely now. The mayor when she came in, she didn’t say much. Once our project is done, it will be pretty sweet.
I love Cefalu. It is one of my favorite places that we have come across so far.
I think every experience is going to be a good experience as long as you take something from it. I like to take everything for what it is and experience it.
MAUREEN MCKERON
Naples
I really liked Naples. I know they told us that it was going to be a rough city but I didn’t really find it that way. I guess my favorite part of my time in Naples was the opera house and going to the opera even though the show, Candide, was kind of odd. It was still a once in the life time experience. I never really pictured myself going to an opera in Italy.
I remember the dinner afterwards at the restaurant where they invented the “Margherita” pizza a hundred years ago. I loved the Italian people who came into our room and played music for us. It was really fun.
Palermo
The first thing we did in Palermo was go to Monreale. I really liked Monreale. It wasn’t a city but a small town. I liked that it was small and I liked just the whole atmosphere of the place-- the small town feeling of it. We went to the cathedral and the cloisters. I thought the columns at the cloisters with all the different designs of the capitals and the carvings were really interesting. I remember that we had a really good pizza there for lunch.
When we came back that day to Palermo, a group of us went to the water and just wandered around on the coast at the edge of the port area. It was really neat because the sun was going down and there were a lot of really good views. I took some pictures as best as I could because my camera is not very good at night. We also found some sea glass from the beach.
The only bad thing from that day was the fact that we were starving and we couldn’t find anything to eat because the restaurants don’t open until 7:30 at night.
The next day we sketched the outside of the cathedral in Palermo. I thought it was really interesting to see the different layers that they had added to it over the years.
We went to the open-air market and everybody was trying the cow spleen sandwiches but I have to admit I didn’t try it. I think we got something else to eat and then we went back to the hotel and it was then I tried the “seven veils”, the chocolate pastry. It was delicious.
Segesta
I liked Segesta although it wasn’t my favorite part of the trip. I guess it was kind of odd to see a Greek temple in the middle of Italy. It was interesting but I am glad we didn’t spend a lot of time there.
Erice
I really liked Erice. It was kind of creepy that it was so quiet in the middle of the day. It reminded me of Ireland in some ways. There were the small houses and stone paths. It had a quiet feeling to it. Then we went to the castle and that was really beautiful. I think it would be interesting to see what Erice would be like when there are people inhabiting the town in the summer.
Cefalu
I think Cefalu was probably my favorite part of the trip. It was the right balance of a small town but with plenty of things to do. I remember on our second day there we climbed the mountain with our group. It was fun because we had to find our way up the mountain by ourselves since nobody else had gone up the mountain before. I am in the history group. When we got to the top, we looked at the city from above. It was helpful to see how the city went together and you could see the piazza from the top. It was helpful because you could see the context as to where everything was.
Most of the days we were in Cefalu we were really working on our projects. We had some interesting conversations with Nikko who was the historian of the town. He was really helpful but he only spoke Italian so we had to have Stanley translate for us. It was really funny when he started to bring up the pirates who have come to the island over the centuries. It was a surreal moment having this Italian guy talk to me about pirates on an island in the Mediterranean.
I tried a lot of different foods while I was in Cefalu. I have always been known as a picky eater so for me to try anything beyond meat and potatoes is kind of a risk. One day we had sword fish. This was the first time I have ever eaten sword fish and I ate the whole thing! So it couldn’t have been that bad. Then when we went to the fancy dinner given by the mayor’s office, I ate the first course fish dish, “fruit de mare”. It is a salad made up of squid, calamari, shrimp and all kinds of shell fish like clams and mussels. I didn’t really know what I was eating which was probably good because I tried everything. Everything was pretty good. There wasn’t anything I couldn’t eat. I id stock up on the delicious asparagus and shrimp risotto. Then there was a second fish and an apple strudel dessert so I was pretty full at the end.
Before we left we climbed the mountain a second time. It was funny because my Mom called me when I was on the mountain. I was watching a flock of sheep when she called. So that was neat because I could tell her I was climbing a mountain.
The rest of the time we took it easy until we left to go back to Palermo.
I thought the entire trip was really fun. It was nice to see the countryside of Italy and to experience different foods and a different culture since it is such a different part of the country. I also felt that I used my Italian a lot more because not that many people spoke English. Even though it was a lot of fun, I was kind of excited to come back to Rome. I don’t know why but Rome feels like home now.
LAUREN PACHECO
Naples
I liked Naples a lot. I guess my first impression of Naples was in the taxi because the views from the windows reminded me of New York. It seemed so real and lived in. The people were really nice and friendly and our cab driver was telling us jokes. He was trying to speak in English and some things he said in Italian. It was fun but it was also kind of scary because he drove like a maniac and I hadn’t been in a car for a month. He was driving as if he was racing the other drivers back to our hotel. I also liked the way Naples seemed to be intertwined in itself. I thought the architecture was mostly layered -- things kind of just came together. It wasn’t planned. It was more a natural process. I thought the Galleria was amazing, It was beautiful and I think it was funny because we almost walked right passed it which was probably the point because it was hidden in a way.
The thing about Naples were the people and also the food was amazing. There was a point when we were sketching when two men can out of their apartment with an american flag and a picture with Mayor Guiliani telling us how much they loved Americans. The wanted us, also, to have better perceptions of the Napolitani. The pizza that I have been most impressed with was in Naples, the bread got better the further south we went. The restaurant where they invented the first margarita was the best. Even there everyone was so friendly. The people in the restaurant and the waiters and even one man came into our room and passed his little baby grandchild around. It was so much fun.
The archeological museum was very interesting. I think I liked the mosaics from Pompeii the best in the museum. Just the amount of detail they put into the mosaics was crazy. One of my friends brought up to me how much time we look at the details and we forget what the paintings and mosaics actually symbolize and mean. All these paintings and mosaics were not just for decoration but they all had a specific purpose and meaning.
We got on the boat to go to Palermo from Naples. The boat was creepy. I think it was a recycled American cruise ship from the sixties or seventies. There were a lot of pictures of New York and there were mirrors everywhere. Every place you looked you saw yourself. But the piano player in the lounge was funny and very interesting. We sang with him. We tried to get him to sing American songs but he didn’t know any. I had a lot of fun on the boat because we were just hanging out, relaxing with no required sketching to do. We were just eating and drinking and talking with people.
Palermo
I thought Palermo was great although it seemed a little vacant. It was hard to find places open. Some of the buildings were beautiful. Some were run down but a lot were beautiful. There was an opera house and a cinema that were amazing. The cathedral was interesting with all different sorts of architectural influences from different places and different times. When we sketched the cathedral, one of the local schools was having a protest march to raise the children’s awareness for peace. Speaking to the kids was really nice. We had to speak to them in Italian. The kids didn’t realize we were Americans at first and when they found out they were so excited and started trying to use their English that they had learned in school.
Monreale
I thought Monreale was really nice. It had amazing views and it was a cute town. Architecturally it was a sweet place and the church there was breathtaking inside.
Segesta
The Greek temple at Segesta was also nice. I thought it was really cool to be able to sketch it from the inside of the temple especially since I had seen it so many times in school in slides. It seemed so amazing that I was actually there experiencing the place.
Erice
I fell in love with Erice. In my mind, it was what a little Italian town would be like. I could imagine how the place must be crawling with people in the summer. The town itself with so few people there made me feel like I was in the labyrinth. When I broke away from everyone else and I was alone, it seemed like there was no one else in the town but me. I thought it was very interesting that a lot of the restaurants and stores had signs that led to them. They had arrows pointing out the direction to their places. I kept finding myself in this maze of a city. When I finally got to my destination, I had no idea how I got there since the streets were so narrow and winding and confusing. There were some amazing views and neat niches like doorways and alleyways -- little details that made the town so interesting and gave it so much character.
Cefalu
Cefalu was great. You could tell that they had some real problems with city planning every time you walked from the hotel to the town -- just seeing how things got sprawled out and separated from each other. The walk was boring and if it weren’t for the sea, the sounds of the waves and the view, it would have seemed like an incredibly long and tedious walk. The town itself was very beautiful, espetially at night. I enjoyed just walking around with everyone. My part in the project was to study the ocean front and how the sea connected to the street through the buildings. It was a really fun and interesting project. We climbed on the rocks going all along the sea wall. Then there were a lot of interesting ways in which the buildings connected to the water. We got a lot of pictures of doors, steps and things that connected to the rocks in interesting ways.
I liked Cefalu because we made some Italian friends who were learning English. They made us dinner at their apartment which was right on the water. They taught us some Italian, and some sicilian, and we taught them some English.
I loved going South and I want to arrange another trip before I leave hopefully to Pompeii and definitely back down to Sicily. It was nice going with everyone too, I felt like I got a chance to get to know some people better and it was nice to see such beautiful places with friends who enjoyed being their as I did.
JOHN PERAGALLO
Naples
We initially got off the train and got into a cab to go to our hotel. I thought the hotel in Naples was one of the nicest hotels I have ever been in. I also was impressed with the Galleria Umberto. Its sheer size and the actual environment it presented was very comfortable and at the same time astounding. I couldn’t believe the great condition it was in after all the world wars it had been through. They said it had gotten damaged during the wars. I really enjoyed the pizza. They said the restaurant where we had the pizza was the birth place of the margarita pizza and I was impressed with that. The restaurant was a fun environment. I had a good time and I think everyone else did too. I really enjoyed the breakfast at our hotel the next morning. The view from the top of the hotel was spectacular and the food was also very good.
Contrary to everyone else’s opinion, I found the people of Napoli very hospitable and nice. The museum was also very beautiful. It was really interesting to look at the formal ruins of Pompeii and see things that were over 2000 years old. It really puts you in the whole scope of Roman history. The Spanish quarter was interesting to see how people interact with each other when they are in such close quarters sharing laundry lines and walking around the streets instead of driving.
Palermo
The first impression of Palermo was not a good one but I became more impressed the longer we stayed there. At first I thought it was like Cuba. I had this vision of a Haiti Cuban movie in my head. I think it is one of the better-organized cities as far as accommodating the automobile. I thought the food was pretty good but not the best. I enjoyed the opera house and the exterior of Il Duomo. It really showed how diversified Sicily is and how many cultures conquered it and you could see all this in the exterior of the cathedral walls. People in Palermo were a little more uneasy with us being there. They had a little less patience with our ability to communicate with them. I don’t know if they were not used to foreigners or not but I felt uncomfortable when they were speaking to us.
Monreale
Monreale was a beautiful town. I really enjoyed it. It felt like it was the first of two vacation towns that we visited near Palermo. It was a very comfortable, easy going place. The Duomo in Monreale was one of the most impressive churches I have ever been in as far as the mosaics. I also enjoyed the cloisters. They were very beautiful. It was very calming to sit there and sketch and see how it all fit with the Duomo and the town. It was a nice transition. The view off the mountain was also incredible seeing all of Palermo and the sea from up high.
Segesta
It was really an incredible experience coming up the hill and seeing the temple. Not only seeing the rolling hills but seeing this 2000 year old temple was impressive. I was surprised at how intact the temple was. It had a very prominent position in the actual town it was in. It really showed the importance of the temple in the town. Again it was a very calm, serene atmosphere where you could just relax. It was very separate from a city atmosphere. It was almost like it was at the opposite end of the spectrum.
Erice
The view from the bottom was impressive and then as you kept climbing up the mountain, it just kept getting more and more impressive. To build a town on a hill that high, it seemed as impressive as the architecture that was in it. The view off the side by the castle, you could see for miles and miles. It was a spot I didn’t want to leave. You couldn’t really appreciate how amazing it actually was. Even today I can’t imagine how amazing it was. I have never experienced something that massive. I couldn’t appreciate the actual view. There are no words to describe how beautiful it was. It seemed endless this view all the way across the landscape and into the sea.
Cefalu
It was really a great experience driving into Cefalu from where our hotel was. The initial drive in was another astounding view. Seeing the town nestled up against the mountain was really impressive. They built their culture on the base. The mountain was just a feature of the town. There is the town and then the mountain. Climbing the mountain was a lot of fun. The first time was really something to see that view initially and then we saw a cave on the way up that I really wanted to see again. So when we came down, I bought a flashlight hearing that my friends were going up again. So we went up and saw the sunset. On the way down we actually explored this cave and found a spiral staircase that went down to a platform where there were two crevices on either side that pointed down further into the mountain. Unfortunately we only had one flash light and we needed to be safe so we didn’t go down. Owen and Spiral were really scared. They thought there were going to be ghosts down there. I just wanted to keep going. I love this kind of stuff, Indiana Jones style.
I enjoyed the project. I felt I learned a lot from the city just experiencing it and seeing how people interacted. We were the piazza group and we focused on the main avenue in town and the two major piazzas.
All in all I really enjoyed the entire experience. It has shown me a new way to experience life and how people live in a different environment. Everything I have seen has been incredibly beautiful and more than I ever could have imagined. I would do it again in a blink of an eye.
MATT PRICE
Naples
I really enjoyed Naples. I really liked the Galleria Umberto as well as the opera house. I was kind of blown away by it. It was interesting in that I didn’t realize it was there from the outside. I really enjoyed the inside of the opera house. I enjoyed the level of detail and craftsmanship that was put into the house itself. Usually in buildings like this it goes from the outside to the lobby to the interior and this was the exact opposite. Nothing insinuated that it was there. I didn’t like the Spanish Quarter in Naples. It wasn’t that it was bad but there was an uncomfortable feeling about it, a closeness about it.
I did enjoy the collection at the museum particularly the mosaics. It was kind of funny the one mosaic depicting the Alexander the Great Battle I had seen before and it took a second to realize I was standing in front of this piece. What I really enjoyed about the piece when I saw it was his eye. He has tremendous energy in his eye which isn’t depicted in the painting next to the mosaic. You have to see the mosaic itself to feel that energy. The energy in the eye encapsulates the energy that it would take to lead such an army into battle.
I was really impressed with Mt. Vesuvius. I enjoyed seeing this mountain. It was just like this giant almost natural monument in the distance that was instilling both wonder and awe at the same moment. It instilled something that made people want to be near it because it was such a source of power but at the same time it could destroy you. Mountains traditionally are used as places of defense and so here was a great mountain that could be used as defense but at the same time it was also a volcanic mountain so it could be your demise.
Palermo
I enjoyed the boat ride a lot. If had flown or even taken a train or a bus I don’t think I would have enjoyed the trip as much. Sicily is an island and in order to get the correct feel for it as a journey, you need to go by boat. There is no bridge so you really couldn’t take a car. Traveling by boat was how people got there from the very beginning so it was only appropriate that it was how we got there as well.
The town of Palermo, I personally didn’t care for it. It struck me as a port city, or a transient town and so it felt as though it was being used in such a way. It felt as though we used it in such a way too. We would start the day from Palermo and go to other destinations and come back that night in Palermo.
Palermo had hints of inspiration such as the Four Corners as well as the Duomo however it lacked the cohesion that you would find in the city of Rome itself. It had these elements of greatness but I don’t think the people were willing to make the extra effort to bring it all together.
I stumbled upon the Police headquarters which was this ultra modern building. It was unmistakenably modern, very retro-lineal lines, no elements even hinting at an association with past architecture. I took pictures of it. It was juxtaposed with buildings that were over 400 years old that were falling apart. It was just weird to me to see this. It just struck me as this big disconnect. You could see the effort of bringing this city to the 21st century but they have a long way to go.
I really did like the Duomo itself. I liked seeing so many hands at work with each hand making it into what they wanted it to be. Taking what already existed and turning it into something new and meaningful. They didn’t just accept the space and use it for what it was or compromised their beliefs for what already existed. It looked like a conglomeration of many different cultures but essentially it was how each culture transformed the space into what they wanted it to be.
I had gone for a run one day and the one thing that I found on the run was after you leave the beaten path there is not much more to Palermo. My personal opinion of the city, outside the Duomo and these main streets, was a city that was really in severe disrepair. I saw apartment buildings that were completely falling down. It was unlike American cities where if I had seen the same thing I would have been completely uncomfortable in that environment. Here I didn’t feel as threatened. It wasn’t nearly as dangerous.
Monreale
What was amazing to me about Monreale, as with all of Sicily, was the amazing amount of influences small spaces could have. It had this cathedral that had Byzantine/Norman architecture and it was right next to the Islamic architecture in the cloisters. I really enjoyed the view. You could really almost understand looking from high to looking down below the organic growth the Sicilian culture had gone through. It grew out from the sea. It had high density by the coast and then it worked its way up into the mountains.
The church itself had incredible mosaics. When I think back to Catholic University and how long it has taken them to put mosaics in the Basilica, I am pretty much taken back seeing such mosaic work everywhere in Sicily. To me it reads this wasn’t a product of ten or twenty years but a product of hundreds of years of collective effort to this one creation. To see such combined organization culminating into a unified goal, this is rarely seen in the modern age.
Segesta
I really liked Segesta. It was so refreshing to see the simplicity of what architecture is trying to achieve. It was almost like a poem. It picked out only certain elements. It didn’t use a lot of words. It sifted through all the nitty-gritty and brought out the simple elements that architecture has been trying to achieve. Even like modern day architecture, it is nothing more than the column and the beam. Everything is based off of that. There wasn’t much there but you didn’t need much more.
Erice
Erice as a town was one of the best towns I have been to on the whole trip. The one thing that I think it was lacking was the human element to give it life. There were not many people in the town outside of the few tourists. It almost gave it a feeling of an archeological site where you had the freedom to explore and sift though it at your own will. It didn’t really feel like anybody owned the stuff.
The town itself had such amazingly beautiful views. It just went on for miles and miles. You could see the coast on two different sides of it. It was so inspirational -- awe inspiring. There was a big castle and a little castle underneath it. I was able to get down into the little castle. I got a great photograph. I was actually able to stand on the porch of this castle and see what they saw and my personal interpretation is that they built the castle for fortification and stuff but they also built this castle because they liked the view.
There was also a bird that we saw and I took a little video of it but you could tell how unbelievably high we were because it was just riding the wind and not really moving. It was just hovering there in the sky. It was kind of crazy.
Cefalu
I really enjoyed Cefalu. Cefalu was really peaceful to point where it was difficult to do any work there. All you wanted to do was to enjoy the beach. The town itself had two very opposed nomenclatures or vocabularies. There was the old town and the new town. It seemed to me they really didn’t like the new town. It almost had a sense of wanting to go back to the old. I think it would be a terrible shame to try and limit or stunt its growth by reverting back to the old style. I really enjoyed the water around the city.
We worked on the beach and we had to analyze how one goes from street to promenade to beach. It was the connection between beach and street basically. And this gave us a better sense of how the town was at least originally organized and what direction the town should go in the future. The original organization had a high importance for beach front. The town itself pushes out almost over the water. It stops right before the water itself. However the new town has big open spaces disconnected from the beach. Although it might have been possible in the past, it is important now to develop on these properties. So in the newer developed areas there can be this connection between beach front and town.
I really liked the mountain. It was a very stunning juxtaposition to the city. You had these two polar elements -- the beach front and the mountain. The way the mountain was conceived was of billions and billions of sea creatures. When it rained, the mountain actually weathered away so it looked like this plateau high above the city. It was interesting for me to see how the people used these two very polar elements to their very best advantage. The mountain represented almost exclusion as a fortification that was used if there was a siege to keep people out whereas the town itself was an example of inclusion. It was a port city that allowed people to come and trade goods and both worked very well together. I think it is a very hard thing to do to take two things that seem polar opposites and use them both to create one unified town.
As for personal experiences, I think the last night that we were there we were able to see the sunset on the rocks. It was such a clear sky and there was nothing there -- just the view and the rocks. If you couldn’t feel at peace here, I am of the opinion you couldn’t find peace anywhere. It was such a peaceful moment. It was just very hard not to appreciate this peaceful moment.
I really enjoyed our trip in Southern Italy. It allowed me to see that despite the fact that we never left Italy, there were so many different kinds of environments that we could be exposed to. It allowed me to see how colorful the Italian culture actually is and that eliminating it to one stereotype would be a completely inaccurate and false representation of this truly colorful culture.
JOEY SCHETTINO
Naples
I loved seeing Mt. Vesuvius in the background. I did a lot of shopping in Naples. It was a place to do it. Architecturally the Spanish Quarter was interesting because it was completely organized into smaller blocks than the rest of Naples. The grid system was more apparent than the rest of Naples. It was interesting to see how small the roads were and that cars could actually fit down them. I also liked how they hung their clothes out to dry with a canopy over them. Spiro and I walked down pass the horrible rendition of the Pantheon. We walked down to the water to a little overlook to see the Gulf of Naples and all the mountains in the background. To think that Mt Vesuvius had so much impact on Pompeii and to think of so much history occurring here and that we were in the center of all that was amazing. Outside Naples is Avelino and that is where my great grandparents are from. We didn’t go but this is the culture in southern Italy where my family is from. It was good to be immersed in the southern Italian culture rather than just think about it from America.
The overnight boat to Sicily was fun. Just leaving and going across the Mediterranean down to Sicily was great. I have never been to any of these places before. I have never been to Europe, It was another adventure, another experience being together with this family of architects.
Palermo
Palermo was great. We rented scooters and went up the whole coast line to Mondello and it was absolutely beautiful as the sun was setting and we were getting great pictures of Spiro, Marco and me. We got some food and kind of watched the sunset and the lights becoming more prominent down the coast.
They had this huge concert going on one night. It was a mix of cultures. It reminded me of what it must be like in Mexico or places like that. I felt like I was in Mexico but here I was in Italy. We had heard that there was a big soccer game going on and the players from the opposing side were staying in the hotel that was right down the street from us.
Park Geribaldi was incredible to see the tree’s roots. They looked like they were growing up to the branches. It looked like the tree was melting down to the ground. We took pictures and drew a few sketches and climbed the trees as well.
Monreale
We were just going up the mountain and we looked back and it was a very nice day and it was warm out. We were working our way up the mountain to Monreale. We stopped at the church and the church was beautiful with wood post and beam idea and you don’t see that in most of the other churches but more marble and cathedral ceilings with domes. The cloisters -- the way they had everything laid out, it was like it had its own grid. It was a grid of building, then path, landscape, then tree and then it worked its way back down to building on the other side. It was a very nice peaceful place to be.
Segesta
Segesta was where we saw the Greek Temple. It was an adventure because it was on top of this huge hill and we had to hike a little to get there. It was the most preserved Greek Temple in the world. It was really a sight to see all the columns intack and when you are on top of that specific part of the mountain you can really see everything. I don’t know if they quarried the stone for the temple right there from behind the temple site but there was an awful lot of rock that looked like the same materials that they used to build the temple. When we were drawing our section through the landscape and the temple, you really got the sense of how massive this hill was that they put the temple on. You really did get a full 360 degree view of what was going on around the temple.
Right next to the temple it was really nice. There was a huge field of yellow, orange and blue flowers that made the site that much more breathtaking. I have a good picture of this. It is a good picture because I got down and got a close up of the flowers with the temple in the background.
Erice
Erice was on top of a huge mountain as well. I believe it was 2,442 feet above sea level. On the way up the mountain, you just looked back and you could see the coastline, the water and the town below and it looked pretty incredible. Everybody on the bus was scrambling to the right side of the bus to try and get a picture of the views. So when we arrived it was definitely much colder up top than it was down below. We broke off to do our three drawings that we had to do at three different scales. I drew a close-up of a side of a building that had a few small windows and it even had some vegetation growing out of the side of it. Next I drew a section through a small street. The street ended at an intersection so you could see a doorway at the end of the drawing as well as a little skyline. This was one of my better drawings. I took pictures of these two areas of Erice as well.
There was a huge, huge castle that was at the top that had been converted into a small hotel with seven suites for just under 300 Euros a night. The castle was built right on one of the ledges of the mountain. It was incredible to see how they could build these basically continuing the rock landscape up and creating a wall to be part of the castle. I took pictures of the castle as well.
My personal experience in Erice was staring at the castle and realizing how difficult it was to construct this castle but how they knew that this specific area on top of a mountain was a great spot for a castle. You could see people for miles and miles out so you would have enough time to prepare if people were going to try and take over the castle.
Cefalu
Cefalu was by far my favorite place. It might have been because of the good weather but I believe it was because of the site in general and the beautiful landscape. Cefalu is a town that is built around a huge, huge rock. It turns out that the rock wasn’t made by volcanic action or anything like that but it was constructed of fossils. It was probably underwater at one point in time. The beach that ran along the coast line from where we stayed at The Hotel Tourist to the old part of the city was stunning. In the winter time the beach is much more open than in the summer when it is completely covered with umbrellas, changing rooms and showers.
In the summer it is a completely different scene than when we went in their off season. Basically everything in the summer becomes this tourist attraction rather than just a place to live. They are actually running into problems of how to fit everybody in and how the bazaar comes into contact with everybody. This is part of our big project that we have to figure out. My part of the project is a site that is across the street from the beach and the idea is to create a hotel as a well as create space for the bazaar. On top of that I have to create more space for parking either behind the hotel or under the hotel. So the challenge for this semester is to create this urban space as a theoretical idea to help out Cefalu in their busy times of the summer.
As a personal experience, two days out of the five days that we stayed there we actually decided to go swimming at the beach. One day it was probably about fifty degrees and the water was a little bit warmer than outside. The waves were pretty big so that kept our mind off how cold it actually was. It was February 2nd, the first day we went swimming. I never thought I would be saying I would be going swimming on February 2nd! We went back the next day as well but the weather was a little bit better and it was probably 65 to 75 degrees in direct sunlight. About twenty of us hung out on the beach. Our friends in Rome came to visit us in Cefalu and we all sat out in the sun and sun bathed that day. We just laid out on the beach.
My last name is Schettino and the receptionist at the hotel desk asked who was Schettino in the group. I came forward and he pulled out the phone book from the Cefalu area and showed me that a town about five or ten minutes away had about thirty Schettino’s in it but the way they spelled Schettino was Schittino. When my great grand parents came over from Avelino, the name was changed from Schittino with an “i” to Schettino with an “e”.
Cefalu was definitely my favorite place especially running into possible relatives from generations and generations back. Every day there were new sights to see whether it would be the sun set or the sun rise or the panoramic views from the top of the rock. The small castle at the top of the rock was pretty beat up but it was just a beautiful place to be. It was really an experience of a lifetime.
Adam Schwartz
Naples
Naples seems to be more rough around the edges than Rome. It is big, loud and colorful. In general, I like the city. It is by the water and has great views. I really enjoyed the archeological museum as well as the little shopping streets and the restaurants.
I loved going to the opera. It was really amazing getting to see that opera, Candide, in such a beautiful space. Coming into the boxes where we had our seats for the first time and seeing that gigantic space and the lights, it was pretty awesome. I had been to Naples before but only to go to the overlook and look out over the city. I was never really down in the streets, in the bustling streets. It was a lot different this time being down in it, really experiencing the life in the streets. The Galleria Umberto was really interesting. Apart from all the beggars that were there, the architecture was really interesting. The Galleria sneaks up on you as you are walking down the street. All of a sudden it opens up to you -- these huge open spaces both indoors and outdoors. In the Galleria the souring cast iron vaults were really neat.
Naples overall has a different feeling than Rome but I don’t think there is anything in particular that I didn’t like about Naples.
Palermo
I had no idea what to expect since I had never been to Palermo or Sicily before. Palermo was a pretty pleasant surprise for a smaller city as compared to Rome and Naples. It still had a lot of interesting places to go. It was nice to go a place that was a little smaller and less congested. I love the waterfront -- the stretch where you can walk for miles. It was really beautiful. It was impossible to take a bad picture.
The cathedral in Palermo, the Duomo, was pretty amazing. It was awesome seeing so many influences outside on one building all meshed together. Monreale was another pretty awesome place that I wasn’t really expecting. Smaller than Palermo, it basically sits on top of a mountain. It is an extremely small town with great views of the water. The inside of the cathedral at Monreale is even more impressive than the interior of the cathedral in Palmero. The cathedral at Monreale is very detailed and ornate inside whereas the Palermo Cathedral is more stark and grey and has less details to capture your interest.
Trying to find a place to eat in Palermo was interesting. It seemed like everywhere we went the restaurant would be closed or the employees were playing “Play Station”. So after walking around in what seemed like hours, we ended up in a restaurant right across the street from our hotel. I don’t remember what day it was, but we were all hungry and it was about 6:00 pm and we were pretty much out of luck finding a restaurant that early in the evening.
Probably my favorite part of our stay in Palermo was walking along the waterfront. It was late afternoon and it was a beautiful day and there were gardens and pedestrian spaces near the water. It was just a really pleasant space to walk through.
It was interesting walking through the Italian food market because of all the sights, smells and tastes. In the places that sell fish, they displayed sword fish heads and little sharks. We had what ended up being a cow spleen sandwich. I had no idea what it was until I was eating it and only found out afterwards what it was. It tasted great.
Erice
The drive up to Erice was astounding. Seeing the sea so far below, along with the city of Trapani at the foot of the mountain, I had a hard time imagining someone climbing up the mountain without a bus. The town was tiny and dead because of the winter time but it still had a whole lot of interesting spaces to see. I could walk around the whole town in less than an hour. A couple of friends and I found an old Franciscan monastery that they were restoring. I am not sure we were supposed to go inside but we got in and took some really cool pictures. A guy finally came out and told us to leave. He followed us out of the building but we had already seen the whole thing. We didn’t make it to the castle like a lot of other people but we still saw a lot of things. We saw the great panoramic view at the top of the mountain. We walked around the city walls high above the trees and the water. We found some cool animals --some dogs and cats. They started following us around a little bit. We ate at a nice little restaurant. It was once again one of the only ones open so about a third of our group ended up eating there.
Segesta
It was great to see the Greek temple. We learned about it and had studied it in our very first architecture history class. It is in the middle of some very beautiful countryside. And unlike a lot of places in Rome, like the Coliseum where a major road runs around the it, here the temple is still in its natural setting. If you suspend your disbelief you could really imagine it being used a couple thousand years ago by the people.
Seeing it for the first time was one of those moments where I was basically saying I can’t really believe I am here. I didn’t really understand the scale of it from the pictures I saw in class. It was pretty massive and much bigger than I expected. When we learned about it in history class, I had no idea where Segesta was and I certainly didn’t know much about Sicily. It makes a lot more sense now that we know more about Sicily and all the groups and cultures that came through here and built their structures and left their mark.
Cefalu
I had done a little research before we left Rome but it really didn’t do justice to the area and the city itself. Through our projects we basically covered the city from front to back and we explored almost everywhere. It was really a great city to get to know that well. It is intimate with really narrow streets and then great public spaces such as in front of the cathedral. It is a great setting for a city right at the foot of “La Rocca” (The Rock). It has landscape like I have never seen before with mountains so close to the water. It would be hard to find landscape like that anywhere-- in the US or anywhere. Our hotel was maybe a kilometer and a half from the city but it was nice to get to walk that stretch every day. It was pretty amazing to be that close to the beach all that time and I could only imagine what it must be like in the summer when the population doubles and everyone is out swimming.
It was a really beautiful town and the first night we were there, it was awesome. I don’t know any other words for it. The sun was setting and we went out on the beach and played on the rocks and took some great shots. We walked on the sea wall and it was great seeing that for the first time and being with everybody.
My favorite moment was climbing the mountain, La Rocca (The Rock). I really love climbing and I have never done it in a place like this before where I am that high over the city and over the water. And if that wasn’t enough, there were also ancient ruins on the mountain and a flock of sheep just roaming around. This was another awesome group experience. I was so glad to be there with everyone and share the moment. Some people had climbed up the mountain the day before. They had told us about it but it didn’t really compare to doing it yourself. I thought I would just climb up to the ledge. I didn’t know you went all the way to the top of the rock. Fortunately there were stairs going half way up. Looking from the bottom, it looked like a pretty daunting task but once I got to the top, I felt pretty good.
The studio project was a little frustrating at times. The group that I was in had a complex situation to portray and it was hard to figure out how to do that. We were looking at urban expansion and the influence of the automobile. So we were dealing with urban design issues and problems with transportation and traffic congestion. And while it is not our job to solve the problem, it is still a complex problem to present on a series of boards. We are still in the process of figuring it out. But we did a lot of on-site work, lots of drawings and picture taking. On the up-side, there is probably no better place to do a project like this. Because of the size of the city, you can really get to know it over a course of several days. We spent a lot of time in it and even though we were working, we still managed to enjoy ourselves.
In summing up the entire trip, it was absolutely amazing and the weather was almost perfect the entire time. I saw things I never expected to see. Everything was so new and different. Everything seemed so fascinating because it was so foreign to me. It is going to be really hard to go back to Rome.
OWEN THOMAS
Naples
The first impressions I had of walking around in Naples were very different from Rome. This was not in an negative sense but a positive sense. It was the first time I saw the Mediterranean Sea. Walking around the city was a lot of fun. It was the first city after Rome that I had been to. It was interesting to see a different culture and taste slightly different food. Having heard that it was an unfriendly, dangerous city, I really didn’t get that impression. Maybe it is, but we didn’t have any problems. Everyone seemed nice and friendly other than the time a couple of the girls got egged but even that was slightly amusing.
I was really looking forward to going to Pompeii so I was disappointed that it was raining and so we couldn’t go. The archeological museum was really interesting and I liked seeing the mosaics from Pompeii. It was interesting to see such a different culture. But I think seeing the actual city of Pompeii would have been more interesting -- at least to me.
Everything in Naples was interesting but there was nothing really spectacular compared to some of the other places we went to later in the trip.
Palermo
I liked Palermo. In the city it was nice and there were some very nice places that we went to. The things I enjoyed the most were outside the city when we went into the rural areas and up into the mountains.
Monreale was really the first time I had seen a town outside the big city. It was really nice to see the mountains. I really wanted to hike one of those mountains. It would have been nice to have a half day off to go hiking even though that is not that architectural. The cathedral was very nice and to be able to get up high and see the landscape was very beautiful.
Segesta
I really liked the Greek temple. Again getting out of the city where you can actually see the architecture without the cars zooming by was wonderful. I really liked seeing the temple in its more natural environment. It was nice to see something that has not been completely restored and you could actually tell how old it was. It was more impressive that way.
Erice
Erice was probably one of the highlights of the trip. I really liked the town. It was so cool to walk around a town so old. It was the first castle that we saw. I was really excited to see the castle. It was amazing to see a city built there on top of the mountain. I was just imaging how anybody could build there. There were buildings on the edge of the cliff. The architecture, and not to mention the views from all directions, was amazing. I like walking around the town and exploring it because it was such an interesting place. The fact that it was built on this huge mountain was amazing. I assume it was built there for protection reasons. I was thinking that in those times they build for completely different reasons than we do now. They built on high land and on mountains tops for protection reasons where as today you find most small towns and cities built in in valleys to help protect them from the weather rather than from invading armies.
Cefalu
Cefalu was very beautiful. I really liked it there. It was much more of a quiet kind of scene. I could imagine it would be very different when it wasn’t during the off season. Being there in the off season probably made it easier to get our work done and see the places we needed to see without working around other people or being distracted.
It was really nice being on the beach as well as having the mountain right there to climb and then to have the city in the middle. You had all three extremes right there. It was a very interesting culmination of things. It made it a very beautiful and interesting city. It was a lot of fun being on the beach and being able to go swimming. It wasn’t too cold. It was cold for the first two minutes and then you kind of got used to it or you just got numb. It wasn’t that much colder than the Atlantic in New England in the summer.
We were the “morphology” group. We had to study how the city connects to the water. Basically we were looking at how there is the exterior wall built around it and how the city interacts with the water and the rocks. Morphology is how the buildings morph into the rocks. A lot of the buildings, their base was the shore and their base was built right into the rock. We were looking at how the buildings were affected by the ocean, how they related to the ocean and also how the buildings pretty much acted as a barrier from the ocean to the city. There were very few openings to the city. You could be walking on the street right next to the ocean and you wouldn’t know the ocean was right there.
Hiking the “La Rocca” (the mountain) the last night was great. We hiked it so that we got to the top right at sunset which was really beautiful and really cool. To see the whole sea go from the way it looks in daylight to how it looks when the lights all start coming on at night was amazing. There was a flock of the sheep right at the top and a sheep guard dog who kept barking to protect his sheep. He was very intimidating but he was harmless because he made it clear that we shouldn’t come any closer to him or his sheep. The most amazing part was seeing that sunset from the top of the mountain and climbing around the old Norman castle with the sheep dog barking at us the whole time.
We ran up the mountain while it was still light to get there for sunset. Then the decent, in the dark, was quite entertaining. We found an old cave. John had brought a flash light and we went into the cave. It was really cool and kind of scary considering we only had one flashlight and there were four of us. The cave went on a quite far with small passages. We didn’t feel like getting trapped or lost, and considering it was dark outside, we decided not to venture down too far. The part we saw was amazing. There were stalactites and stalagmites hanging down in the cave. It was a real cave! It wasn’t man made by any means. It was really cool. Spero was very scared. He was trying to get us to leave the whole time.
The whole trip was a great experience, It was so nice to see so many places. To see all these great places and to be able to sketch them was a lot of fun. It was fun to be able to go to these places but also have free time to interact with the local people. I actually realized I have learned a lot more Italian on this trip having to communicate with people.
ERIN TUMEY
Naples
The first impression reminded me of New York as compared to Rome because it was younger, fast paced and the cab driver was crazy. It was pretty much like a New York cab driver where they own the road and they just don’t obey any of the street laws. Once I tried to explore the city on foot, I found it very colorful and lively. The Spanish Quarter had more of a human scale to it with smaller streets and people’s laundry hanging out from the windows. People were very nice in Naples. I liked the Galleria because it was very unassuming from the street. But then it suddenly opened up to a large public space. I liked Naples at night with the shopping district. I did have one unfortunate experience with some young kids throwing eggs at me. They hit me on the head and yelled “Mi amore!” After the shower I took to get the egg yolk out of my hair, I enjoyed the group dinner that we had in the pizza restaurant. Then the next day, we walked by an excavation and that was very exciting to see just below the modern city all the ancient ruins.
Palermo
It was interesting to arrive in Palermo in the early morning before all of the shops had opened and before the city had awakened. After we checked into the hotel, we were able to walk around and watch the whole city open.
Walking around Palermo I wasn’t that impressed. Palermo was dirty compared to Rome which I have been experiencing for the past three weeks. Palermo didn’t take care of the trash as much as I would have liked them to do. I thought the architecture was wonderful but I was distracted by the city being so unkept. When we visited the Duomo, I enjoyed seeing the public spaces that Palermo had developed included Teatro Maximo. While I was sketching the Duomo, young students, who had been on a break for lunch, filled the piazza. It was interesting to see a cathedral piazza being used as an everyday congregation. I also enjoyed walking down the back streets -- which became a walking tour -- because it got us off the city streets and into the more charming residential areas.
Monreale
We got on the bus and visited Monreale. It was beautiful and charming and the views were spectacular. In Monreale, when we visited the church, there was a service spoken in French and Italian and I was excited to hear it all. I also liked the lunch we had because the barber next door was very friendly and wanted us to take pictures of everyone to send back to him. I also bought pastries from the café which were quite delicious.
Segesta
Segesta gave me my first experience being in an ancient Greek Temple. Although it wasn’t as large as I had thought it was supposed to be, it was still impressive with its geometry and preciseness. It was also interesting to observe the surrounding area from the temple hill because it wasn’t built up as a town. It was in the outskirts, in the landscape where there was just the temple.
Erice
Erice is my new favorite place. The climb up the mountain really gave it a uniqueness and I could imagine why some people never left the place. Not only is it charming but it would be strenuous to climb up and down the mountain everyday. Walking Erice, I really took note of the paving because grass was growing through the cracks and it gave Erice a greener look. I also liked the height of the buildings in that they were more intimate and more personable than in a larger city. Everyone was friendly in Erice.
Cefalu
Arriving in Cefalu was enjoyable because the road led from the mountain down to the coastal city. We came through the tunnel and we got the first view of what I had been seeing in pictures for the past few months. My biggest impression of Cefalu was all the history pertaining to the city wall and how you were not allowed to build outside the city wall until the 1600s. There was a distinction between the old city and the new city not only in the architecture but also in the planning of the streets and the organization of mixed use buildings. Outside the city walls it was hectic and unorganized. As soon you walked into the old city walls, it became charming and Roman almost. You got the cobble stones back.
I enjoyed learning about the city wall and how as time went on and the city wall was no longer needed, they used it as a foundation for homes and buildings. There is virtually no “wall” left but rather a wall of homes which line the boundaries of the city. It was also nice to see the beach. I was taken back by the color of the water. It was the most perfect blue-green. I had never seen color like that before. As we were walking to and from the hotel along the promenade, the color of the water would change throughout the day. In the morning it was the blue-green and in the evening it became almost blue-white with the crashing of the waves and the sun setting. I enjoyed the view of the white water along the shore but I also liked the view with the background of the mountains and the curving of the shoreline.
I liked most the smells of Cefalu. I kept calling it the town where you can follow your nose to a good meal. As we were searching for restaurants for dinner, we would pass by a restaurant that had just amazing smells -- garlic and butter -- and pass by pastry shops that just filled the street with sugar.
My project were the piazzas. We studied the main street between Piazza del Duomo and Piazza Garibaldi. We studied how these piazzas along the main street influenced city movement and further planning of the new city.
I thought the trip was very well planned -- not too long but a decent amount of time in each city. At the same time after twelve days of traveling, I am anxious to get back to Rome, settle in, and I guess feel at home because it has been a twelve day vacation.
ELENI VAKALOPOULOS
Naples
I guess on first impression I liked Naples better than Rome. It seemed a lot closer and just smaller and it was less touristy than where we are in Rome. The Galleria was not what I expected. It was a lot larger and more open. I liked the transition from the store openings that then go up and become windows. When you are walking down the street, you don’t expect to see such a space but you think you are going to look down another alley and then you come across this big beautiful area.
Shopping was a lot better in Naples than in Rome. I tried on five pairs of the same shoes to find my shoe size. I finally found my size and I ended up buying the shoes. They were little ballerina flats, size 40. After shopping on our way back to the hotel, we got a little lost. A group of pre-teens came up to us and one boy yelled “Mi amore!” and hit Erin in the head with an egg. It then ricocheted off her and into my eye and onto my jacket. We just froze because we couldn’t believe it actually had happened to us. The only good part about getting egged was that it forced us to take a shower and we realized how good a shower we had in our hotel.
Palermo
The SNAV, our boat, was huge but our rooms were not. It was a pretty calm boat ride from Naples to Palermo. Pulling into Palermo around 7:00 in the morning was nice because you got to start the day early and see how things set up in the morning.
I liked Palermo a lot more than Naples. It was a lot cleaner. It was cute. I liked it. On our way from the cathedral to the Park Garibaldi a couple of us decided to take our time and find our own way. Spiro and I left our little group because we had found the water’s edge and a little park. It was such a beautiful day, we decided to stay a little longer than we should have. We realized we had no idea where to go so we called Erin for directions and ended up getting even more lost. After talking to Dave, we realized we were at least twenty minutes from the Park Garibaldi. We asked everyone on the street for directions but no one had any idea where it was. We even asked the police for a ride but they said no. We eventually found our way after running for at least fifteen minutes and we made it for the last five minutes of class.
Monreale
Monreale was beautiful. We took the bus to get there. The view from the top was like nothing I had ever seen before. The cathedral was big and impressive.
Segesta
Climbing up the steps leading to the temple was just as beautiful as the actual temple. The landscape and the scenery surrounding the temple was amazing. The temple was shorter than I pictured it to be but a lot longer. It was a typical Greek temple.
Erice
Erice was my favorite little town. It was the cutest, cleanest and most welcoming place we had been to so far. All the little alleys and side streets had as much character as the actual houses. The most impressive part of Erice was the castle that overlooked the mountains and the sea and a little town below.
Cefalu
The bus ride to Cefalu was a lot shorter than we expected and it was well worth the hour of being cramped inside the bus. Our hotel overlooked the sea. The walk into town was long but nice because we were beside the water. Everything in Cefalu was close once inside the old city. For our project, we had to do Cefalu before Cefalu -- the geology. We learned that titanic plates formed Cefalu and now with the cathedral and its towers, the shape of Cefalu looks like a snail. We climbed the mountain to understand how it was formed and found fossils along the way in the rocks. Looking down onto the town, was one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen.
The best experience in Cefalu was going swimming with the boys in the sea and climbing the mountain, “La Rocca.” I felt like my project doesn’t have to do with anything -- meaning our project with the geology. It has to do with the larger scheme of things. But it has been a great get-away from Rome. It was nice to get out and see Italy outside of Rome and experience the smaller towns, the closeness of the people and the actual towns themselves.
WILL WECKENMANN
Naples
I didn’t really like Naples. It was weird when we got off the train. It was chaotic and the square that is in front of the train station was pretty ugly. Needless to say, my first impression was not very good. But the Spanish Quarter and the Galleria were cool. The Spanish Quarter reminded me more of Rome. I liked the scale of it and the fact that there were more little shops and little places to eat. I think over all Naples was an ugly city.
The mosaics in the archeological museum were cool. I enjoyed them. It would have been nice to go to Pompeii. It rained and I ended up getting soaked anyway while we were standing outside waiting to get into one of the churches.
I had never been to an opera before. I am not very cultured so it interesting. So going to the opera was fun. It was a good experience. It was a glimpse of high society. I thought we would be in regular seats. I didn’t know we were going to be in a box and that was cool. I could sleep in the back of the box without anyone noticing.
Palermo
I liked Palermo. It was a nicer city than Naples. It had more public spaces and the spaces were better designed so they were more interesting to be in. It had a better feel to it. We got into the city more.
We went to a good restaurant, a little family place, and the people in the restaurant were really nice. The food was incredible. I had “tortellini a la chef”. I don’t know what was in it but it was good. We got to relax more in Palermo. After sketching during the day, we got to go back to the hotel and relax and then go out and eat.
Monreale
Monreale was cool. It was the first time we got up on a mountain. I had never been up in a town like that. The East coast is pretty flat for the most part. The landscape isn’t as dramatic as in Sicily. So it was cool to be up there and look out at everything. The cathedral was really awesome. It was a good break from all the Renaissance and Baroque architecture that we have been seeing in Rome. The mosaics were incredible inside the cathedral. I had never seen a cathedral like that before and I was amazed how well preserved everything was.
Segesta
Segesta was where I left my sketch book. Oh, that was miserable. I also lost my pencil sharpener there too! Other than that, it was nice. We got to see the countryside. It was really out there in the landscape. It was different from seeing things in Rome. There wasn’t anything around the temple, just the temple in the landscape. The landscape accented it which was really cool.
Erice
Erice was where I realized I lost my sketch book. It sort of made the second half of this day trip a bit miserable. It had been nice up until that point. In Erice we were up so high on the mountain top and you could see so much. It made Monreale seem like just a hill. I took a decent amount of pictures there. It was kind of quiet. It was weird but it made it seem older. It felt like a real medieval town which it really was. There were no cars rushing around. My knee hurt that day too and that didn’t help. I guess it hurt from all the steps. We went back to Segesta to pick up my sketch book. I was very thankful I got my sketch book back and that no one cared that we missed the salt flats in Trapani.
Cefalu
Cefalu was nice. It was more active than I had expected which was nice. I had wished the hotel were closer to town. The walk was not very fun. The old part of the town was really nice. I liked going on the walking tour that we took the second day even though I couldn’t understand what they were saying. The weather was perfect too especially when we climbed the mountain.
We didn’t really get too much done when we were in Cefalu. There was a lot of bureaucratic stuff that we had to endure with the people from the mayor’s office. The studio space was miserable. It was cold and dark. So no one really wanted to hang out there and work. We also had as our project the bad part of the city, the new part. Compared to the beach group or the group who got to climb the mountain, it was pretty miserable. Although I did gain a lot of valuable insight into the city planning or lack there of from our project. I think it will help me with my project, the next part. I liked Cefalu. I would like to go back, maybe in the summertime.
Probably climbing the mountain was the best part of my time in Cefalu. I got to see everything, all the surrounding area and put it into context. It was interesting that climbing this mountain was actually like climbing a real mountain. There wasn’t an actual path that went to the top. The view at the top was nice.
Summing it all up, I would say it was a great trip. I saw a lot of great things and ate a lot of great foods. I am looking forward to our next vacation to Northern Italy.
EVAN WIVELL
Naples
Naples was a bit of a disappointment for me. I wasn’t too fond of the city after the few days we were there. The weather may have had something to do with it since it was raining. It was disorganized, dirty and I didn’t think the people were as friendly as Rome or the other places we visited. I did enjoy the Galleria Umberto. I thought it was nice space and a good attempt at a public space in the city. It seemed like the city really needed it especially in regards to the bizarre fake Pantheon and the piazza in front of this Pantheon.
I did like the Spanish Quarter. I thought it was pretty interesting. You could feel the evolution of the street sections over time. The streets really felt alive because there was so much activity compressed in this small area and it wasn’t a commercial street with impressive facades trying to create an image. It was inhabited by people and the results were a direct reflection in how they lived their lives.
All the pizza in Naples was good. I did go to the opera. It was a neat experience. I am glad I went. It was a little bit confusing at times and I had never been to something like that before but it was fun.
Palermo
I really enjoyed Palermo. It was quieter than Naples and Rome and I liked that. It was good to see it when it wasn’t the peak of the tourist season. As a result, it was harder to find a place to eat. Everything either opened at 8:00 pm or they were completely closed.
My first impression of the Duomo in Palermo was that it was a disaster but after a while it grew on me. I still don’t think it was all that attractive of a building but it was interesting. After all the symmetry and order that we have been studying, it was nice to see a building that was a little more organic. I was not impressed with the interior of the Duomo. It was like a completely different building -- the inside from the outside. There was uniformity on the inside. It had been completely remodeled on the inside and it hadn’t kept any of the mixed influences and collision of cultures that the outside presented.
Monreale
I really enjoyed Monreale. The weather was great and it was a nice little town. It was the best I had seen so far on the trip. Later on, the other views we saw overshadowed these first views. I liked the cloister that was attached to the church. I thought that was an interesting space. With the sun shining, there was an interesting interplay of shadows and light. Most of my memories were from the outside rather than inside.
Segesta
I really enjoyed seeing the temple. I had been to Greece before when I was younger. Our history teacher mentioned that Greek buildings make better ruins than Roman buildings. And Segesta was definitely a beautiful ruin. I have always been a fan of the big white Greek temple on the hill and Segesta was certainly a good example of that. The weather was great and the view was beautiful and it was a good time. I took some good pictures.
I really enjoyed driving through the Sicilian countryside. All of Sicily was the most beautiful place I have ever been. I would love to get back there.
Erice
I thought Erice was an amazing town. I am glad we went outside of tourist season to how it functions outside of that context. The views were the most amazing views I had ever seen. I had never imagined a town build that high on a mountain like that, isolated. I loved just walking the narrow streets, seeing the patterns in the pavements and also seeing some interesting doors and windows. I took some good pictures. Then every side street you passed, it sort of dropped off this mountain and the views went on forever. The castle was incredible. I spent a lot of time there sketching and just hanging out. It seemed like it grew right out of the cliff. I would have loved to see them build it. Erice was great.
Cefalu
Cefalu was an amazing town as well. The old part of the city, the cathedral, the court, the beaches and the rocks, it was all great-- a great little town. My group analyzed the periphery and the urban expansion as well as the more unorganized, unchecked growth of the city. I think I got a different view of the city than most people do who only see the more fairytale aspect of the city. I saw the more actual problems of the city. Outside of the original city walls, the new built section was not the greatest but I still really enjoyed Cefalu. Hopefully our design projects will help straighten everything out but it needs a lot of help.
It was nice to be able to go out into the city and do our sketches and do our analyzes and come back to the studio and put everything together. The studio space, however, was pretty miserable. It was cold, dark and loud. I guess it was the best space we could get, and I appreciated that, but it wasn’t the most conducive space for getting work done.
The last day when we climbed the mountain was probably one of the coolest things I have ever done. There were a lot of factors as to why it was so cool. It was an amazing day and an amazing place. After spending so many days in the city, it was amazing to see it from a different angel up so high. It is hard to explain why it was so awesome but it was. It is always really great to see something like the Temple Diana that is so ridiculously old. You can’t get that experience in the US. It puts you in a different context when you can experience something that is thousands and thousands of years old and that it still there. You spend so much of your life on yourself and what is going around you, it almost makes you feel small when you are forced to think about everything in the past and everything in the future. In the grand scheme of things, you are just so small. I don’t think that is a bad thing. So many things have happened and yet something like the Temple Diana has stayed constant. Cefalu was great.
The whole trip was amazing. Both from a traveling stand point and from the advantage of the studio. Being able to get to sites and do this project that wouldn’t have the same tangibility if we had been back in DC and we were given a site we didn’t get to see. From an urban design perspective you are not going to get this kind of project anywhere in the US with so much history and these layers and layers of buildings over time. Everything in the US is relatively new compared to what is going on over here.
Etichette: 25 january to 5 february 2007
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I got a tour of the castle and I made friends with one of the guys who spoke very little English, if that, and was so pleased that I was insistent on speaking my little Italian and not English. He invited me in for a café for free. The shops that I went into were also so friendly. They gave me free post cards and discounts because I was using my Italian. There was one shop where I was intrigued to go in because it had a bunch of cats coming out of it. I walked in and they had all the quilts that are famous in Erice. Behind the main shop was a room where the owner’s wife was actually using the old loom. I was asking her if I could take a photograph in Italian and her son was in the room with her. He was on the computer and he asked me where I was from in Italian. I was happy to learn that the woman actually had an exhibition of her work in NYC every year. Her son was telling me in English how his mother made her quilts and showing me the quilts and pulling more from the next room behind the workshop -- actually their apartment. I looked into the apartment and saw 8 cats that the owner was feeding. They were all sitting there next to a little furnace fire place. They all were running around. One was sitting near the woman who was weaving. She was telling me the names of the cats and how they were related to one another. This was the grandmother etc. I wanted to buy a postcard but they insisted that I have the postcard for free. “You speak Italian. Send us one of the pictures you took of us.”
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