Woke up at an ungodly hour and had to meet at Piazza Indipendenza at 6:50 am. As you can guess, the streets were pretty much empty except for bleary-eyed SACI kids making their way to the bus. Luckily, we had a 3 hour bus trip ahead of us and ample nap time.
Circa 10 am (this comes directly off the schedule we got from the professor guiding us! She is very tied to her schedules and timing. Nothing gets in her way. Gotta love Helen) we arrive in Ravenna.
[Brief explanation. SACI’s art history classes have an on-site component, which basically means there’s a 3 credit field trip addition to the course. But for those of us not in the art history classes, sign-ups are put in the main building every Monday before a trip and anyone is welcome to go on the trip for free as long as there is room. Amazing deal! Free trip, plus the most knowledgeable art history guide I have ever met.]
So Ravenna is known for it’s Early Christian and Early Renaissance art. The trip was full of church after church after baptistery. My favorite church was San Vitale, the official church of the Byzantine emperor and his church. The interior was gorgeous and had mosaics everywhere. I also liked San Francesco which has a crypt that is always full of water and goldfish swimming around in it. Not sure why that is…but pretty cool to see!
After a longggg day of trekking around Ravenna, we got back on the bus and headed home to Florence, getting back around 8:30 pm. Good thing we had to wake up for round two tomorrow…
Sunday- Medici Villas and Vinci
Biggest mistake was two Helen field trips in a row. Helen is a whirlwind of knowledge. On the bus every morning of a field trip, everyone is given a headset so that we can hear her explanations (fancy fancy eh?). Luckily, this means when you have had enough history of what that giraffe symbolizes in the fresco, you can just turn the headset off and explore on your own. Which is what I learned day 1 in Ravenna, giving me an advantage day 2 and making the trip that much more enjoyable!
This trip was absolutely gorgeous. The sights and views we saw really were how I always imagined Italy.
We started the morning off later (7:40 am woo!!), arriving at the first Villa soon after. The Medici Villas are just outside of Florence, making it a pretty convenient visit. We saw three different villas, Castello, Petraia and one farther away, Poggio a Caiano. This last one was my favorite with a gorgeous front porch, impressive frescoes throughout the house and a fun interior to explore (turns out all thouse house tours with my parents when I was younger really made me a fan of looking at old/new/model/villa/anything houses.) Then we were free to explore the gardens for a picnic lunch!
We left the villa and headed into the winding hills of the Italian countryside. GORGEOUS GORGEOUS GORGEOUS. Cameras were snapping away like crazy. Another funny note about field trips with SACI kids is the quality of the camera and the amount of scrapbooks out, pencils quick at work observing what we see. Definitely not what I’m used to but I love looking through everyone’s work. One guy also gave me some great pointers on perspective that will help with my illustration projects.
When we got to a little village, Carmgnano. The rest of the group set in the church for about 30-40 minutes to observe the renowned Visitation. My friend Lauren and I decided to peek in at the painting and then explore the town to see the views. It was a refreshing break and we got great pictures!
Then we traveled to the land of Leonardo, Vinci! We went to the Museo Leonardiano with reconstructions of some of his inventions. We also stopped at the house that it is believed he grew up in.
All in all it was a great trip. Exhausting weekend though.
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