Villa Barbaro

Villa Barbaro is a famous residence designed by Andrea Palladio in the 1500's. We spent a lot of time studying this building for one of our arch history classes a few years ago so it was kind of cool to see it in person. Otherwise most of us didn't find this building particularly interesting, so we had some fun with our cameras...

Andy did some posing for me...

Having some fun with the photo-stitch. hes multiplying...

Ok enough of that for now. Here are a few interior pics of the frescoes by Alessandro Vittoria. Most of them are poor pictures because picture taking was not permitted inside so I had to just took some blind shots haha.

Crazy spike ball on fence with statue in the background

Shot of the tree lined path between the vineyards in front of the villa.

North Trip

I have returned home from my travels north which included Verona, Venice,  and Vicenza (all in Italy), and Berlin and Paris. I have many pictures and videos to go through and post. I hope to have them all up by the end of the week.

Churches

There are over 900 churches within Rome's city limits... here are my pictures from 4 of them.

St. Paul outside the walls. (one of the four main basilicas)

Beams of sunlight pouring in

There are more marble/ granite floors in Italy than carpet... way more.
I think I've seen 2 buildings with carpet and a few dozen that are marble or granite (basically every church or nice public building)

Altar looking back. On the left where the people are gathered are the steps leading down to where Saint Paul is entombed.

Smaller church called Santa Maria in Cosmedin

One of its two main attractions... the mouth of truth.
Long ago people would place their hand in the mouth to see if they were lying or not.
Turns out there was a guy with an ax on the other side of the wall and he decided if you kept your hand or not.

The other attraction... the head of St. Valentine

St. Mary Major

Large urn that is said to contain wood pieces of the True Cross.

Kate, Steph, and Julie outside Hard Rock. This ones for you Aunt Debbie!

On Sunday we got up early to go to the Vatican because on the last Sunday of every month the Vatican museums are free. Sadly we got on the wrong bus and ended up on the other side of town for a while so we didnt make it there until late morning. When we got to the Vatican the line for the museum was about a mile long (and this was only the part of the line we could see). So we just went into St. Peters and went to mass instead! (this was quite interesting being neither catholic or Italian... haha) There will be another blog sometime soon with the rest of my Vatican adventures.

Nave that can hold up to 60,000 people for mass.
Walls, floors, ceilings all marble. This place has more marble than a quarry.

Altar

Main Dome. To give you a sense of scale there are people walking around the rim of the dome up there... and you cant even see them in this picture

No the pope was not there, but he called and told me we could do lunch sometime next week.

Sicily

After our class trip was over a group of four of us traveled down to Sicily for the weekend. We left Naples Friday night on a large ferry that took us down to Catania, Sicily. The ferry took 12 hrs but luckily we had a four person room to sleep in. In the morning we arrived in Catania where we explored for only a couple hours before getting on a train to our final destination, Siracuse. 

Mt. Etna. Europe's most active large volcano. (once we got on the island you could see smoke rising from the peak) 

This is a video taken from the ferry panning across the entire view from the deck. There were two decks of semi trucks at the bottom of the ship which you get a glimpse of in the middle of the video... 3 of those trucks were Ferrari shipments... we came up with some plans to boost the cars while we were waiting for the ship to dock haha.

The train ride took us south down the coast for about an hour. It was the most beautiful train ride I had ever been on (I haven't been on many but I can imagine this one would rank up there quite a ways). After being in the city for a month seeing open countryside was quite amazing. Although, this countryside was much different... instead of corn and soybeans it was rolling hills of citrus trees as far as the eye could see (with the exception of the east side which was citrus trees and then the beach).

Shot from the train window

Poseidon fountain at the train station 

We only spent about 36 hours in Siracuse but we managed to see quite a lot. As usual I will let the pictures show...

Rocky Beach

Crazy tree with branches that grow down into roots

Trees trimmed into one long block (yes thats my finger in the upper left haha)

This is pretty comical depending on your age

Mom - I found AFLAC! (I asked him to make the sound for me but he wouldn't do it)

This is a clip of a very strange sport we witnessed being played... we don't know what its called but it looks like a cross between kayaking and water polo.

Santuario della Madonna delle Lacrime

Huge ceiling from the inside

Video of the ceiling

One of the very dark but cool paintings in one of the sanctuaries
(if you look close you can see the angel embracing the figure)

Ruins in Siracusa

Greek ampitheatre outside of town
(yes I said Greek even though this was in Italy)
Many of the best kept Greek ruins are actually in Italy because most of what the Greeks built in present day Greece are badly vandalized or even destroyed.

Rock from the ruins that fell while we were visiting... I held it for them until they could brace it.

Greek Colosseum

Ear of Dionysus (cave - you could whistle or yell and it would echo for nearly 10 seconds)

New corvette we spotted in the streets... expecting to see a Ferrari? just wait...

We just happened to stumble upon a Ferrari club meeting in a parking lot

No luggage in the trunk here...