Anyway, back to Bologna...since it was Sunday, we went to mass at 6:30, and then to dinner. After dinner, I met up with my friend Maria from ND who happens to be studying in Bologna for the year. We got gelato and walked around. It made the world seem very small, to go to a small Italian city and see someone I know there from the U.S. And it made me appreciate again the awesome opportunities that ND provides for studying abroad--I know people all over the world right now. Maria told me something interesting that I didn't know--St. Dominic is buried in Bologna! I was very excited to hear that and of course decided immediately that I would have to visit his tomb the next day. Luckily, that wasn't very hard to work out, as it turned out to be one of our stops during morning class. It was amazing. I also got to go back to that church for mass at 12:30, and it was one of my favorite Italian masses so far. The chapel was small and peaceful, and the people there reminded me of daily mass go-ers back in the U.S. That afternoon the temperature suddenly dropped and it rained a lot, which was sort of uncomfortable, but not too bad. Bologna, like many other cities, has a huge tower that can climbed up by a lot of stairs, so a group of us decided to do that. Here we are at the top:
From left to right: Alex, Adriana, me, Evan, Anne
Bologna actually was supposed to have 2 huge towers right next to each other, but the other one was leaning too much and had to be chopped short. The one that we climbed is also leaning, but not as much. Turns out Pisa is definitely not the only place where towers lean...
After Bologna, we went to Montova (Italian for Mantua). This was Monday night. The days and cities definitely started to blend into each other. Liturgy of the Hours and the mysteries of the rosary helped me to somewhat keep track of the days, but still. Anyway, our dinner in Montova was one of the best meals I've had so far in Italy, if not THE best. The atmosphere was great--Evan and Katie and I went to a small restaurant on a piazza, and sat at a table with a canvas umbrella thing overhead and a candle on the table. We had delicious red wine. I had risotto, a type of rice, and some grilled vegetables. Our waitress was very nice and we even got a student discount. It was very peaceful. Life felt good. Afterwards, we walked around the town a little bit and found 3 cool things: a milk vending machine where you could get a bottle of fresh milk for a euro, which we did of course, a giant echo tube, and a castle with a real moat. A successful night. In the morning I ran by some lakes, and felt kind of like I was back at ND...the highlight of the rest of the day was definitely seeing Palazzo del Te in the afternoon. It's a building designed by Guilio Romano, who studied under Raphael, and we've been hearing about it since freshman year...it's one of the things I remember best from our architectural theory class 2nd semester of freshman year, actually. It's unique because in classical architectural, there is a certain way that elements are supposed to be put together, and here Romano doesn't do it right, but he does it in a way that shows he knows what's supposed to happen and deliberately chooses to change a few things around a little bit. One of my professors described it as a sort of "architecture inside joke". So here's Katie and I standing in the courtyard!
Next we hopped on the bus for Verona, but I think I'll leave you in suspense for a bit as to what all happened there, because this post is so long I don't have time to write it all now...it's going to have to happen in installments:-) But more to come soon!
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