Paris

Oh, also we went into a small art store that sold very large paintbrushes

and very small mechanical pencils- this one is so much smaller than it even looks here. (And it costs around 23 euro!!!!)

Paris

Tuesday and Wednesday in Paris were much more eventful than Sunday and Monday.

We...

-saw the Anish Kapoor exhibit at the Grand Palais
-went to Notre Dame
-and a couple other churches (mysteries all - we didn't write down the names)
-saw the lock bridge
-Leah got stabbed by a petitioner/beggar... with a pen.... but still. Really.
-got a little lost in Paris
-ate snails and raw meat - steak tartare, and only a bite or so each. Bleh. The snails were good.
-went to the TOP of the Eiffel Tower (it's SO tall. sooooo tall.)
-made it back to solid ground safely
-saw the longest, wettest, saddest line in the world (outside of the Louvre)
-made it into the Louvre without waiting in the long sad wet line. There we saw many wonderful artworks.
-survived many rude tourists (people wayyyy more annoying than us).

So far it's been fabulous.

Anish Kapoor exhibit - for scale, the background person in black is directly under the arch.

Lock bridge - it's a tradition here (and apparently some other places) to write your and your amant's name on a lock, lock it to the bridge, and then throw the key into the water. 

Leah's first delicious bite of escargot.

Ta-da! Way more awesome and worthwhile than either of us expected. Paris is truly the City of Lights. 

Venice and Paris

We spent our second day in Venice with Kelley Lowe (a friend of ours from VCU) who explored the Venice Biennale, the largest modern art exhibition in the world, with us and helped us get on our way the next morning.

The Biennale could've taken a whole week so we ended up seeing about a 1/3 of it, some parts at a breakneck pace, other (more worthwhile) parts a little slower. One of our favorite pieces was an enormous sculpture that was a life-size replica of a famous Roman antiquity statue (probably over 25 ft. tall) made entirely of wax, with a wax observer nearby. Both the person and statue contained lit wicks and were partially melted.

After the Biennale we had dinner and stayed the night with Kelley in her apartment (what a relief to be able to cook!!) She helped us on our way to our very early flight the next morning. When we reached check-in, wearing ALL of our clothes and with as many things stuffed in our pockets as would fit, we realized that the Ryanair 12 lb. weight limit for carryon that we had been so freely complaining about was actually 22 lbs - a fluke resulting from the kilograms to pounds conversion.  Overall, it was quite a relief. 

Once we arrived in Paris we were welcomed by the lovely Mary Lowe (the mother of our friend Kelley and our host for this week), and then went off to meet up with Leah's friend Laura and Laura's boyfriend Francois. We spent the rest of Saturday seeing a bit of Paris, complete with a quick trip to the Eiffel Tower (we'll have a longer one tomorrow and actually go up in it :). 

Sunday and today we have just been taking a much-needed rest and planning the rest of our time here. Tomorrow, we are lucky enough that the Fete de la Musique is going on, which is apparently a country-wide music festival with musicians in both streets and concert halls all day! Also we'll see Notre Dame and Sainte Chapelle. 

Venice

Venice is a maze of tiny walkways, arches, bridges, and canals that we've both fallen in love with. We spent all day waiking around getting lost and finding ourselves again.

Florence

Florence is a place of many stairs and few elevators - we pity the florentine handicapped. In the Ufizzi gallery we actually saw a bathroom marked as handicapped on a landing in the middle of a staircase. Our cheapest lodging yet has also been our most amazing. We may have been sleeping in tents but we had a million dollar view of all of Florence. The view didn't come without it's own price. Mt. Kilimanjaro stood between us and our sleeping quarters. The city of Florence is filled to the brim with old world charm, from the half-century old buildings, to the stone paved streets, to the mounds of renaissance art work that we recognized from our art history textbooks (but could not remember anything about). It is definitely an important stop for any art student. And now, after some train trouble, we have made it to Venice!

Rome and Arezzo

Me at the Colosseum (no idea how They get pictures of these places without streetlights, cars, other buildings, etc, what with it being smack dab in the middle of a city)

Leah and Ryan looking over the countryside surrounding Arezzo. I think if you look close you can see the villa where we are staying... it's yellow and on top of a hill.

From the Fountain of Trevi to the Pantheon to the Tiber to the Colosseum and a dozen piazzas and markets in between, then the Vatican to the Sistine Chapel to the train station (and gelato stand) and we were away! We had a whirlwind of our two big days in Rome (almost all on foot) and are now in Arezzo, land of beautiful Tuscany vistas, delicious authentic Italian food and very steep hills. Arezzo is more than 2000 years old but still full of energy. We're staying with Ryan Smith, a VCU friend of ours, at the villa where he is taking a dance intensive in a tiny performing arts school called Accademia dell'Arte. We both tried grappa for the first time (!!! thinking of you dad and Popop), Leah ate what we're pretty sure was a sandwich of raw meat, and I tried wild boar (all tasty, some more surprisingly than others).
We're on to Florence tomorrow after breakfast and an EBAS (Elemental Body Alignment Session) with the students here.

Reykjavik, London, and Rome

We can't even begin to compress what's been going on onto this little screen but in short, internet is muy expensivo and rare, and British service personell are very chipper. Gelato is abundant and Italian Muzak consists of just one song. We haven't for more than four hours at a stretch in three days, (but we will tonight) and we just bought our first alcoholic beverages out of a vending machine!

We know that trips have their ups and down, and since we started on a pretty big down ( missed a flight by the skin of our teeth bc of a Reykjavik workers strike and spent an unexpected day in London, which tore our plans to shreds) hopefully now we're started on the way up! Tomorrow, the colliseum and pantheon, along with churches and a lot of walking!


(P.s. Affordable internet is much more sparse than expected and unfortunately therefore our posts will be as well.)