day one / sat 27 mar 2010 =
we left the villa at six am to take a train to basel, switzerland. it took over seven hours and two train changes, but we made it to our hotel and to our tour at three. an architect gave us a quick walking tour of the city. we went to a church and he told us about the history of basel and then took us across the city pointing out unique buildings and famous architects’ studios. one building i really liked was the children’s wing of a hospital. they used a special material on the outside and the colors changed as you moved past it.
we were on our own for dinner, and after getting some swiss francs, we learned how expensive things are in switzerland. we explored a little bit, had dinner at a chinese restaurant downtown, and then went back to the hotel. one of the girls here, allender, knew a girl who had been a foreign exchange student at her high school and lived right outside of basel. she met up with us and took us to this place called ‘city beach’. it was a club that changes locations every year, and the whole inside of a warehouse-type building is transformed into a beach resort. it was really cool! it reminded me of prom with tons of sand on the ground and beach chairs and cabanas. they had a pool going through the one room and a hot tub in the other. no one told me i was going to need to pack a bathing suit!
allender’s friend gave us instructions on what trams to take back to our hotel. after we switched trams, no one noticed that they had changed the track and times because of day light savings time that night, and trams stopped running an hour earlier than we thought they were going to. so we ended up at the last stop without passing our stop. luckily someone had a map, and we got directions how to walk back to the hotel. we knew it was going to be a long walk when we passed a sign pointing us to the ‘city’. it took over a half hour to get home!
day two / sun 28 mar 2010 =
we had a private bus take us to ronchamp, france to see le corbusier’s chapelle du ronchamp. this is one of those places that we’ve studied forever, so to see it in person was pretty cool.
we had lunch at a little rest stop café, and then we stopped in mulhouse, france to see low budget social housing, which we had a lecture about in our contemporary european architecture class a few weeks earlier.
we got dropped off at the hotel, and catherine, kelsey, judith, and i ordered pizza to the hotel, because we are cheap and were feeling lazy. turned out that everyone else did that too and six pizzas were delivered. we watched mr. and mrs. smith in italian with a couple of the grad guys and went to bed.
day three / mon 29 mar 2010 =
when we checked in to our hotel in basel, we were each given a card so that we could use the public trams and buses for free, so we took the tram to this place called goetheanum in dornach, switzerland. it was this crazy looking building, kind of rock-like. all of the interior space was similar, it all looked like it was carved. the inside was painted in crazy pinks, blues, and greens. we had a tour guide tell us about the building and surrounding campus area and kept relating things back to the human body. by the end of the tour, we were sure they were trying to brainwash us.
we were running late but had time for a quick tour of the beyeler foundation which is a museum and building workshop for renzo piano. it was a really cool space and landscaped beautifully.
then we were off to weil am rhein, germany. it was so crazy to just hop on a bus and change countries, but we did it the whole first half of the trip! in germany, we visited the vitra campus. we had also learned about this in alessandro’s contemporary european architecture class and we were blown away to see it in person.
my favorite building there was the vitra haus. the whole idea was to model pieces of the building after the traditional house, like a square with a triangle on top. the model house is stacked and twisted on top of each other so it looks like a pile of houses. the places where they intersect create really cool spaces and views into other parts of the building. after our tour of the campus, a couple of us had time to tour through the vitra haus, which is home to a collection of crazy looking furniture. this was definitely my favorite part. you got to try out anything you wanted, and they had this system set up where you could swipe your card and make a wish list of furniture you want to buy. it was really cool.
we decided that we would be able to find a cheaper dinner in germany rather than switzerland, so bernhard took us to this little german restaurant where we could all eat outside together. i had a german beer and schweineschnitzel and fries. it was so good!
day four / tues 30 mar 2010 =
we had an eight am train from basel to verona, italy. we stopped in luzern to look at the train station and convention center. it was a really pretty town on the water, and we wished we could have spent more time there. we had two more stops and finally arrived in verona a little after five.
highlight of the day- we only had fifteen minutes to change trains in milan, and our train bringing us to milan was running twenty minutes late. our tour guide, giuditta who was traveling with us, had already changed our train tickets to catch the next train, but she didn’t tell bernhard, our studio professor. so when we get to milan, bernhard runs to the platform to see if there was any chance that our next train had been delayed. seeing him run, the rest of us tried to keep up. the conductor blew the whistle and we all tried to jump on the closest car. people were pushing each other and throwing luggage to try to make it. half of us made it on the train with bernhard, only to realize that our train ticket was still with giuditta and the other half on the platform. oops! bernhard made some phone calls, and apparently giuditta had to call the conductor of our train to tell them eleven people were riding without a ticket. bernhard just came into our car and said, ‘today we ride for free!’ and laughed. we all thought it was really funny, but the other half was a little bitter they missed the train. we ended up waiting about twenty minutes for the rest of the group at the verona train station.
since we were running late, we didn’t have time to go to the hotel first. we went straight to castelvecchio which was a castle that was transformed by carlo scarpa into a museum. we toured the building and got gelato. by the time we were ready to head to the hotel, it started storming. it was our first thunderstorm in italy! and we were pretty miserable walking in it. we were soaking wet by the time we got to the hotel. we decided to get something close for dinner and all ended up going to a pizzeria around the corner.
day five / wed 31 mar 2010 =
we met at eight am and took a train to vicenza. there, we walked with bernhard to see a couple of villas. the first was villa valmarana ai nani, which was really pretty. here is a sketch i did there.
afterwards, we walked to la rotunda. this was designed by andrea palladio and inspired thomas jefferson’s works, even seen at university of Virginia. we got to tour the inside and took a group picture on the steps with the tiger rag.
we walked to a really cool place for lunch. i had gnocchi cooked in a rabbit sauce. it was really good. after that, we walked to the olympic theater and met a tour guide the program had used before, vilma barbieri. she was a tiny, italian lady who had a microphone pack and was pretty hilarious. we got to go inside the theater as she told us about it and the city. we even got to see a sound and light show sitting in the theater. the set was incredible, especially the perspective showing the city of thebes. the stories she told about the theater and stage were really cool. she took us around the city a little more, showing us some of palladio’s work and some rationalist structures.
we took a train back to verona, and a lot of us went to this mexican restaurant down the street from our hotel. i had enchiladas, nachos, and a margarita. it was delicious!
afterwards, a couple of us met rich and logan, and they showed us the balcony that inspired romeo and juliet. it was gated off since we went at night, but you could still see tons of love notes and messages written on the walls leading to it. we also saw the arena and the bridge before going back to the hotel to sleep.
day six / thurs 1 apr 2010 =
we met at eight am to take a private bus to meet vilma again. she was going to take us to a bunch of different cities. we visited a cool covered, wooden bridge in bassano, a museum of statues and studio by carlo scarpa in possagno, villa barabaro and villa emo by palladio, and brion cemetery by carlo scarpa. it was a long day and half the time we didn’t even know what city we were in, but everything we saw was gorgeous, and vilma was a really good tour guide. we joked with bernhard that she never gave us a rest…even on the bus to the different cities, she was on the microphone the whole time! afterwards, we dropped her off at a bus stop and took the bus to venice. once there, we had to take a water taxi to san marco and walk to our hotel. as we crossed a tiny bridge to our hotel, we saw a hard rock café right across a canal. we knew where we were going for dinner! kelsey, judith, catherine, michael, zac, and i beat the rest of the group and had an awesome american dinner. it was really late by the time we were done, and we all just headed back to the hotel to sleep. when coming back to the hotel, we saw our tour guide from genoa, giuditta, checking in. she spent a few years in venice when she was attending school, so she knew just about everything about the city.
day seven / fri 2 apr 2010 =
today started at nine am and giuditta took us to piazza san marco and talked forever about the piazza, basilica, the clock tower, palazzo ducale, and libreria marciana. we went to wait in the ridiculously long line to go inside the basilica. mario had visited venice a few days before and had e-mailed me the tip to check your bags at a nearby church and you could skip the line. rich was reading his bible aka the rick steve’s italy book and it gave the same tip, so he and i decided to try it. we took his backpack to the church down the street, and they gave us a little card to go right in. we paid to climb to the top and waved to the rest of our class still waiting in line.
giuditta and one of her friends she had met up with who still lived outside venice took us to a less touristy part of venice for lunch and i had pizza margarita and gelato.
after lunch we went to a couple other churches by palladio (this was a palladio trip for real!) and walked back to the hotel. for dinner, judith, kelsey, catherine, michael, zac, and i walked to ponte di rialto and ate an italian restaurant right on the water. i had vegetable soup and white sea bass and bread. it was really good! we walked back to our hotel and a bunch of people came to hang out in catherine and my room. we watched tv, talking and enjoying venetian wine until bed time.
day eight / sat 3 apr 2010 =
today started by going to the peggy guggenheim collection at her house which has been turned into a museum. we got to take a mini gondola ride across a small canal. we had a tour of the museum with a lot of history about how she collected the works of art as well as about the rest of her family.
afterwards we went to a museum and a church. after we went inside the church, i was sitting on the steps finishing up a sketch while we waited for everyone. two little girls came and sat down next to me, practically in my lap to see what i was drawing. they kept saying ‘que bella!’ and ‘come fai?’ which means ‘how beautiful!’ and ‘how do you do it?’ haha but i didn’t know what to say back in italian so i just laughed. their mom was talking in Italian to giuditta and told her that this was the first five minutes they had been quiet all day! it was really cute and everyone was laughing at me and taking pictures. we decided that i had inspired them to become artists. they’re my first fans!
the sketch they were staring at
next we were off to the venice biennale which is a huge park where architects have designed and built different pavilions for different countries. once a year, there is an exhibit where each pavilion is opened, but we weren’t visiting at the time of year, so we saw them all closed up. here are a few sketches from wandering around the garden.
that night, catherine, allender, and i went with our professor bernhard to dinner. he took us to a small, cute restaurant called trattoria alla madonna. he had already been there a few nights before, but told us it was good food at a reasonable price, so we were in. i had lasagna and we went through two bottles of wine, which bernhard kindly paid for, he’s so nice. the best part of the night- we were talking about returning to south carolina in the fall, and three adults at the table next to us told us they were from charleston. allender told them we were all clemson students, and the two men at the table said they graduated from clemson over thirty years ago. we thought that was crazy but it gets even better. they asked what we were doing in venice and i told them we were studying in genoa for the semester. they asked if we were architecture students, and we all said yes. turns out the two men graduated from the school of architecture and had studied in genoa too! they told us they had scrubbed the marble floors we were enjoying now haha. they work for ls3p architecture in charleston, sc and we had a really great conversation with them. they were visiting the man and woman’s son who went to the citadel and was studying in madrid for the semester. it was so cool to meet them, it blew our minds!
after dinner, we went back to the hotel (after bernhard made us get gelato) to meet up with the rest of the group. bernhard wanted to celebrate max’s birthday, which was sunday, so practically all of us followed giuditta to a little bar in a piazza not too far from our hotel. we all drank and talked about the trip. i went with the first group back to the hotel, but then jeff called me, because we had promised each other that we would ‘get lost in venice together’ because that is what you do in venice, so i walked back to the piazza and hung out with jeff, max, tyler, giuditta, and catherine for a little bit longer.
day nine / sun 4 apr 2010 [easter sunday] =
today was our free day. we didn’t have to check out of our hotel until noon. catherine and i got up for breakfast and then went back to bed. we finally did pack up and check our bags in the lobby, and then walked around to pick up some last minute souvenirs, lunch, and gelato (of course). we waited for the rest of the group at the hotel and took a water taxi to the train station to catch our train home. we changed trains in milan. this time everyone made it ;) and we made it back to genoa by eight pm. we took the bus back up to the villa and christina had lasagna and bread waiting for us to heat up.
we had monday off from classes to unpack, catch up on sleep, and work. since it’s still a holiday here, almost nothing in genoa is open. the villa angels arranged for us to have food all day. nate made us all french toast this morning, and since they don’t sell maple syrup here, he made it from scratch! we had powdered sugar, too :) grocery stores closed at noon today so there was a rush for all the guys to get beer and meat to grill for us. this afternoon we had burgers, hot dogs, and barbeque chicken on the grill in our garden. nate, allender, and jamie made homemade french fries, and nate made bbq sauce, since they don’t sell that here either! everything was delicious! earlier today, when we were all talking about how much work we had to do, bernhard was taking pictures of our sketches in the villa and told us not to worry about it, that tomorrow was another day. ha my kind of teacher. and when he brought out a bottle of wine to the barbeque, we knew that today was a relaxed kind of day. after eating, we played soccer, frisbee, and catchphrase in the yard. it was the perfect day :)
No comments:
Post a Comment