When in Orvieto... eat Pigeon

So Easter break ended and school kinda started back up. The week consisted of a lot of journaling and catching up on posting pictures (in case you hadn’t noticed on facebook yet… haha) Tuesday we took a trip during Italian to the theater to see a multimedia thing on Luca Signorelli which was the guy who did all the frescoes in the Duomo. It was interesting to say the least. I didn’t understand all of it haha. On Wednesday we got to take a trip in Orvieto to see a ceramics shop. It was the cutest thing ever! It was a husband and wife that owned it; he crafted the items and she painted them. They did a bunch of demonstrations like making vases and bowls and painting cups. They told us the story of how they started… he was in insurance and she was in art school. They started dating, and she got into ceramics. They got married, and she convinced him to switch from his insurance job to ceramics too… and he did! Then they opened this little shop in Orvieto and hope to pass it on to their son. It was so cute. :)

 He makes...

...and she paints :)



Thursday was market day! I still love market days… I am going to find some when I get home because the environment is so awesome and friendly and the produce is so much better! I have started learning names and making friends with some of the vendors too. The fruit man we always go to is so awesome – he knows a little bit of English, but he gives us crap about it saying we need to speak Italian haha. I was wearing my jacket with Rome on it, and he made a comment about how his soccer team killed Rome and why was I even wearing that?! Another time I had a Napoli soccer ball and he threatened to pop it! Haha. He’s such a funny guy, and because were friendly he gives us free stuff sometimes. It’s not a bad deal to make friends!

Thursday night we got a group together to go out to dinner… bet you’ll never guess what we had! If you guessed Pigeon you guessed right! Yep – I ate pigeon. Don’t give me that look! It’s a delicacy here in Orvieto. People love it so I wanted to try it before I left. It was surprisingly good too. It was kind of like eating miniature chicken wings! It came with this truffle sauce that was pretty salty; it was good, but I could have done without it. The pigeon was good enough on its own haha.

Pigeon and bread with truffle spread.. mmmm..

Friday marked another day trip with our class; it was a cloudy rainy day, but we didn’t let it stop us! We went to Tivoli where we visited Villa D’Este, Villa Adriana, and then to Rome where we saw Jubilee Church. Villa D’Este was AWESOME! It was like one giant water park. There were fountains everywhere throughout the whole garden… and you know by now that I love fountains! One of my favorites was the avenue of 100 fountains. It was a path that had fountains all along it - I didn’t count them… I just took their word for it. It was pretty awesome though. The fountains drowned out all the surrounding noise and it was so peaceful. There was also a HUGE fountain with three reflecting pools in front of it that was another one of my favorites. This was definitely a beautiful villa – my favorite we have visited so far.

 Avenue of 100 fountains

Huge fountain and reflecting pools

Villa Adriana was our next stop which was down the hill so you could see Tivoli up on the hill in the distance. This villa was so big – we only got to see a little bit of the grounds. It was much different from any of the other villas we’ve visited because it is full of ruins. It is very similar to Pompeii, but like double the size – so incredible! I wish I could have spent more time here, or that it would have been at least sunny, so I could have seen more of it. I just tell myself I’ll put it on my to-do list for when I return to Italy! :)

Villa Adriana

The last stop of the day was a drive to Rome to visit Jubilee Church by Richard Meier. It’s so much different than any other place we’ve visited this trip because it is so modern. I was excited to visit the church because I had seen it in all my books from school. It was a pretty incredible building, but after visiting I came to this conclusion… I don’t like it as a church, and the explanations of some of the aspects of the church are complete B.S. I mean come on Meier… you may be able to fool regular people, but not aspiring architects who have also been through the B.S. phase! Haha. It sounds so good, you want to believe it, but there is no way light will only shine through one small window on a whole façade of glass. It just doesn’t work like that haha. BUT, despite reading through his explanations, I did enjoy the building. It was pretty incredible.

Jubilee Church

And now this weekend… I haven’t done a whole lot besides running, catching up on my picture uploading, journal for Marco’s class and now this blog. It wouldn’t architecture school if there wasn’t procrastinating involved right? Haha. But now I’m all caught up on everything and can put all my focus into studio considering our project is due in a week and a half… :S Wish me luck!

Here's to wishing the rain stops soon! Ciao!