Life in Italy

They showed us this before we left, but I forgot to post it before. It's surprisingly accurate, from what I saw. And I think the Italian language is as silly as it sounds, and I think it sounds silly, like German.

Click on it & check it out! I promise it's worth you're time, if you haven't seen it already.

Life in Italy

BEEP BEEP !

It truly was another world.

Sunday in Italy

On our last day in Italy, the summer heat was replaced with cool clouds. It turned into a thunderstorm on the highway that looked really dangerous to a bus full of students. It felt like a giant was constantly running after us sloshing large buckets of water at us. We also had no idea where they were taking us. We soon found out it was Lake Maggiore (or Lago Maggiore or Verbano), home to the three Borromean Islands.

The Borromean family was one of the three most powerful families during the renaissance period, the heir of which is now one of the original princes of Italy. Their family owns three islands on the lake: Isola dei Pescatori, the fishing island; Isola Madre, which someone built for their mother; and Isola Bella, the island of the Borromean summer home, where we were going.

You can see the cute fisherman's island from here.

I think that's Lake Madre. The mountains in the background have the marble this part of Italy is famous for, also what they used to build the "house."


Unfortunately, they didn't let us take pictures of inside the house, and I couldn't because there was just too much to see. Many part of it were centuries old, and being an Italian style, the designs were much more intricate and lavish than normal castles built as battle fortresses. It's still a summer home, the family uses it in the summer because it's cool being surrounded by a body of water. They led us to their gardens, which I guess is kinda famous.



Warning: run-on sentence. If I were born into a wealthy, old family with history that ties into my country's political and religious background, I'd like to have giant statues in my backyard with albino peacocks in my summer house with 195 rooms on a private island where my family owns the whole lake.

Saturday Milano

9:00- week after Fashion Week, everything is on ...

!

9:40-
There were people everywhere. To some, this is their shopping of the year, it's the week after Fashion Week in the Fashion Capital of the World! Stores had great percentages off to clear out their inventory in time for Fall Fashion. Across the street:

It was so easy for me to spend Euros because it felt like play money. It was so much fun! paper for clothes! It was like Hong Kong! Paper for stuff & yummy food and drinks (but a different kind of yummy from Asia)! But the Euro is expensive.

13:15- We took a taxi to

This entrance.
and when we walked inside, we entered a large, open room with one wall painted
of the very original, Il Cenacolo or L'Ultima Cena, by Leonardo da Vinvci. This is an illegal picture taken, because photography inside is prohibited. I also took this photo from my friend's facebook. I'm not ninja status enough to steal a picture from a gallery. But here it is, a giant mural that was restored in the 1960s, painted by one of the biggest geniuses of all time.

15:30- we went back to the Duomo to finish some more shopping. Shopping, what is shopping? They told us when we went to Milano, the thing that we must not miss out on is shopping.

19:00- dinner @

with

21:00- after dinner we went to this giant arc

around the corner is the popular river

They say in the daytime it's relatively quiet, but at night it comes alive with people, drinking, eating gelato, talking, hanging out. A little dirty, impossible to park, with tons of people, this is Italy. We were so tired from all the walking that day, I stayed long enough to get a Tiramisu flavored gelato that tasted divine, watch a fight break out, and see a lot of Italians before I headed back to my hotel room to pass out.

Even in the dark, we noticed how dirty the river was. One of our program advisers said that Italians never grew up learning how to clean, so they grow up in a dirty environment to be dirty people. For my last night in Italy, I didn't have a blast, but I love it. It felt like people here were almost the total opposite of me. Don't hold back. I could imagine here people falling in love, and getting hurt, not being afraid of anything that could or would happen; but to live life with passion (hence the fight across the street, i guess?). Not recklessness, but give it all you got. I'm too lazy to give much of anything all that I got, wouldn't want to risk getting disappointed to lost efforts, wasted time, another unforgivable mistake, another regret. I look for passion in everything all the time, and I revel in it; but I suppose it's just a diversion to ask what passion have I got. Will there ever be anything worth giving it all I got?