Art Travel Diary Thing

While I was traveling in Italy, I tried to draw/paint a little. Mostly we were walking around cities and sightseeing, so I have far more photos than drawings. I'm going to make a little scrapbook/art journal of my trip.

First, I need my CD of photos that I left in Italy so I can figure out how many photos to include. I might add some drawings, because sometimes a photo captures all of the ugly things that you didn't notice when you were taking the picture. With a drawing, you can single out the beauty that caught your eye, and just leave the extra bits out.

Here's a page from the hostel we stayed at in Ravenna. It is my most complete page at this point, and even this one I am planning to add to.

Lucca, Italia

Lucca is a small town near Pisa, Italy, but with fewer tourists (I think) because it doesn't have the famous leaning tower of Pisa in it. I didn't actually go to Pisa, so I can't judge, but I absolutely loved Lucca.


Lucca is surrounded by a city wall, and you can rent a bike and cycle around the ramparts. It takes about 20 minutes to circle the old part of the city slower. The above photo is a grassy bit on top of the wall where I ate some pizza for lunch.


I got pizza from this small family-run place. The guy working there was really cute, but didn't speak English, which probably just made him seem even cuter to me, haha. I wanted to get my food to go, so I had to figure out how to explain that in Italian. It turned out to be pretty easy, haha.


It was a beautiful sunny day, but the wall has nice shady trees on it, so it was nice and cool for biking.


I left the city around 4 in the afternoon, to head to Cinque Terre. The light was just hitting the tops of these trees. I took this shot on the gound inside the old part of the city, looking up towards the walls. A few minutes later I walked through the wall to head to the train station, very much wishing I could stay.

Back from Italy!

Yay! I'm home from Italy, and I managed to sleep in until a decent hour, and I'm going to go and pick up my new glasses soon, and go to Athens tonight, and I can upload photos now! Whee!

Except for the 400 photos on a CD I left in Italy, along with half my gifts for people, lol. But they're going to mail that to me. But I'll get them all in the end, so I'm excited about that! It's so typical of me to leave the most important stuff behind, haha.

I have so many good stories from my last couple of days.

I hiked all day with an Australian on Monday. I met these two lovely people from Uruguay on Tuesday night.

On Wednesday I went back to Milan and had a lovely time just hanging out in a park, and playing catch with a Frisbee. I had a great chat with this English couple on the train to Milan as well.

Yesterday I spent most of the day traveling home, but I sat next to a woman who is a designer for one of the top fashion houses in Milan and met the US east coast competitive pizza team in the customs line. The guy who came 4th in the world for freestyle pizza toss showed me a video of his award winning performance on his buddy's digital camera, lol, which was pretty awesome.

Then, when I got to the airport, I randomly ran into Juliana at customs, on her way home from Dubai. Then I found a confused Danish couple, and played tour guide through the airport and helped them find their bags and car rental.

Right now I'm uploading photos to facebook. I have sooo many amazing sunset photos. I have to shower now, pick up my contacts and glasses, and then go to the doctor, so I'll have to write up all of my stories sometime later. I want to remember all the great people I met.

Hiking

I spent today hiking in the Cinque Terre, these five little towns along the coast of Italy. I am staying in Manarola, so I started out from here, intending to walk to the next town along and paint a bit.

I ran into an Australian, and we ended up walking to the next 3 towns along. Whooo, about 4.5 hours of walking, although with breaks for lunch and a couple of Fantas.

I have lots of great photos to post, especially of the sunset. Tomorrow, maybe I will actually draw or try to get some sun on the beach.

My australian hiking buddy and I didnt make any plans to meet up tomorrow, so I will start out on my own again, but there are quite a lot of people around here to meet. Lots of Germans.

Haha, I just remembered one German guy heard us talking today and asked me why there are so many Americans here now. I think that they are not happy to share their great holiday spot! Also, I am the only American I know here, so maybe there arent that many of us after all, haha.

Cinque Terre

We skipped out on seeing most of Firenzes sights and went to Siena yesterday instead. It is a lovely little city, filled with happy tourists having fun. We had a great cheese and meat plate as our dinner at this little butcher shop.

Today I am going to Lucca. It is near Pisa, but looks a little prettier in my book. Apparently you can rent a bicycle and cycle around the ramparts, haha.

Then, this afternoon, I will move on to Manarola, a small town on the coast. Im staying there for 3 nights, and then back to Milan for a night, and back on a plane to Georgia.

Alright, time to go and catch a train!

Birthday in Firenze!

Today we are in Firenze. The train to get here was great. It only took 2 hours, so we got here nice and early at 11 am and had the whole day to walk around.

It is very crowded here though, which is a bit of a shock, as we were in Assisi yesterday, and staying in this very tiny town called Torricella on Lago Trasimeno in the middle of Umbrian hills.

Assisi is absolutely amazing. The town is like a miniature city, because it is all paved, but it is also like a small village, because the old part is fairly small, and everyone has little vegetable gardens.

We started out at the Basilica of St. Francis, which was great. Dad and I sat and drew St. Francis tomb for awhile. All while we were there, we could hear the monks singing.

We climbed to the top of the city, stopping at a castle on the way. I had this amazing pasta with truffles in it. I decided that from now on we should only eat at restaurants mentioned in our guide book. Today we stopped at this tiny hole-in-the-wall restaurant at the mercato in Firenze, because it was mentioned in our book. I had the most amazing ravioli ever... mmm...

I think, because of the crowds, we will go to Siena tomorrow. Siena might be crowded too, of course, but it will be nice to go back to a smaller city. We saw the Duomo today, and Donatellos statues. There is more to see, but we dont have reservations to see Uffizi or the Accademia anyway, so we would not be able to see the top Firenze sites anyway.

All the photos I have posted were taken by my father, by the way, because I cant upload photos from my camera without the software installed, so Ill have to wait until I get home!

New Twitter Account!

I just created a new twitter account for personal use. I feel obligated to write about accounting on my other one, since Accounting is part of my username!

You can now follow me @cecimeanspeas

We went have seen the 4 big sights that we bought an entry ticket for here in Ravenna, as well as the local beach. It is also raining again, so we are just having a quiet afternoon in the hostel.

The big group of Polish students is gone, although we saw them once today while sightseeing. Tonight there is another big group, only about half the size (33) people, but they are Italian, and the woman who runs the hostel tells me that they will be much louder than the Polish students.

I haven't been able to sit down and draw much this trip because it has been raining outside. I did some sketches at a fwe museums. I'm going to wander around now and see if I can find something to paint to pass the time.

Tomorrow we go to Perugia! It is supposed to rain more the two days we are there, but it will be rain in a new place! So... exciting!

Maybe the weather will clear up for my birthday in Firenze??

Buonasera! Ceci live from Italia!

I am in my 3rd Italian city already! We went to the beach today. Well, it was almost sunny, and warm enough or only two layers, so it was quite enjoyable, but clearly not beach season yet!

This is the first time Ive been able to access internet for any length of time since our first night (in Milan.) After Milan we went to Venice, which is really expensive for everything, so I managed to spend about $10 just on sending emails to la mamma to let her know we are alive and eating healthy.

This huge tour group of Polish people just arrived at our hostel. Cool! We were the only ones here before. I am not sure if they will speak English though, as their group leader had a fairly difficult time checking them in.

Aw, I was going to upload a photo for you, but my camera is not cooperating. I can probably get one off of Dads camera tomorrow.

Packed and sorta ready!

Everything I'm taking is in this bag. And that totally hip fanny pack! (Almost-there's some stuff that's going in a plastic target bag until I meet up with Dad at the airport and then HE gets to take it.

Today I sewed us little cotton "sleep sacks" to protect us from potentially dirty sheets. I hemmed my new jeans, which took hours... I ripped some audiobooks for our iPods and those long train rides.

Oh and I put little ladybugs on my backpack so I look really badass and intimidate pickpockets.

I'm getting really excited about enforced downtime without a computer or a book to read. I'm hoping that some creative juices start flowing and I can work on some projects that I've been turning around in my head for awhile.

Now I just have to get some copies made of a couple of things, and print out the confirmation numbers for a couple of reservations.

Time for... a gratuitous cute photo of Mel and Andrea from this weekend! Claw hands!