Frescoes and Football

This past Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, we’ve been going on both educational and non-educational field trips.  On Thursday, we visited Arezzo to look at a famous fresco of the Legend of the Holy Cross.  While we were there, we also had some free time to look around the city.  Arezzo is a really old town in Tuscany, so it was full of amazing architecture and beautiful views around the edges.

Friday, we drove to the monastery at Monte Olivetto and then to the small town of San Gimignano.  Even though there were huge frescoes in both locations, the best part of the day was definitely the fact that we spent hours driving through the Tuscan countryside.  It was absolutely incredible.  Every single time I looked out the window, it was like being in the middle of a post card or a movie.

San Gimignano is a really tiny hill-top town.  It’s known as the city of towers or spires because it used to have more than seventy tall towers -- our professor referred to it as the ‘little Manhattan of Italy’.  At some point, the local duke ordered the towers to be removed so only thirteen of them remain, but thirteen still looks like a lot considering the tiny size of the town.  San Gimignano is mostly a tourist destination today, but it’s completely idyllic.  All of the streets are lined with leather and ceramics stores, and each window has a different type of flower draped from it.  Exploring the area was definitely a beautiful way to spend the day!

Yesterday, we took a break from viewing frescoes for class and went to the Roma football game!  It was definitely the most intense sporting event that I’ve ever seen.  Roma played Catania (a team from Sicily) and even though the scores wouldn’t affect either team’s standings, the crowds still sang, booed, cheered, whistled, and yelled their hearts out.  The final score was 2-2, and I thought that some of the Roma fans around me were going to have a heart attack in the final few minutes because there were a bunch of shots on their goal.  I’ve heard that soccer is basically a religion to the Italians,and their enthusiasm for Roma definitely surpassed their enthusiasm for Easter Mass!