We're back! The past few days have been quite a whirlwind! Since we encountered rain the first two days of Rome, we had a lot see to our last without having regrets! Not only did we visit the Colosseum, Palentine Hill, the Forum, and Circus Maximus, but we also visited the Trajan baths and several other sites that were breathtaking. The Colisseum was absolutely amazing and the views at Palentine Hill were equally breath taking. At one point, you could see the Coliseum and the Alps in the far background. The Circus Maximus is now more like a rectangular park, but it was still exciting to visit. Toward the end of the day, we made our way to St. Peter in chains, where Michelangelo's "Moses" is located. The condition of all the ancient sites were incredibly impressive. We hated to leave but are so happy to be back at Wofford!! (Sorry, we thought this posted a few days ago but the email did not go through!)

Exploring Rome: Day 2

Today we visited the Vatican, Sistine Chapel and St. Peter's. We began by taking a tour of the Vatican. As shown by the pictures above, there is a variety of art work-- from Egyptian sarcophagus to marble sculptures. However, the entire building itself is a masterpiece. We observed visitors taking pictures of not only the relics in it, but also the designs in the floor, walls, and ceilings (as shown in one of the pictures). Entering the Sistine Chapel was breathtaking, followed by a solid 15 minutes of staring upward at the ceiling. (There are no photos of the Sistine Chapel because photos are not permitted.) Everyone was packed like sardines, but we eventually got a coveted seat against the wall. We then made our way to St. Peter's, where we explored the church and also went into the museum. Leaving, we went to the tombs of previous popes. It was interesting to see nuns praying before Pope John Paul II's tomb. Like yesterday, we were greeted with some rain. Tomorrow we will explore the Coliseum, the Forum, Palentine hill, and the Circus Maximus.

Rome!

We're in Rome! It's just gorgeous. Everything is so old and historic yet functioning as a bustling city. Today we visited the fontana di trevi, where you throw a coin over your shoulder and make a wish. We also visited the colloseum and went into Santa Maria degli Angeli. This church had paintings by Michelangelo in it. It gave us a little taste of what to expect from the Sistine Chapel (tomorrow). One of my favorite parts of visiting the Santa Maria degli Angeli was watching the expressions on the other visitors' faces. We would go so far to say the interior of the church rivaled Notre Dame's interior. We also visited the Pantheon. Everywhere you look there is something historic! On continuing our way to the Colosseum we unfortunately encountered some rain (around 4 o'clock). We will pick up again tomorrow at the Vatican, Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter's.

So when in Switzerland the blog email thing decided to be weird and the post did not appear as a normal post so, here is the post.

Today was a long travel day for us. We ran into many unexpected problems, all starting before 8 30 in the morning. It was topped off when they told us that the overnight was not running tonight despite the fact that is was written in the book. So, we are staying in Switzerland and have a long train ride in the morning.
We got our first experience with the swiss alps today and they are magnificent! Tomorrow is predicted to be even better since we will be going straight through them. Also the city of Geneva, where we are staying, is very Americanized when it comes to all the shopping centers and stores, which consist of even a Claire's.

With all of our free time on the trips, we used it to develop an outline and get together our thoughts and realizations from the many Van Gogh sites we had visited. We discussed what we felt was most important and what we were most strongly attached to so that we could narrow down our paper, seeing that we saw hundreds of paintings by Van Gogh and hundreds that influenced him. We have some more work on the outline but the train ride tomorrow will be a perfect time for that and to continue our research.
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Riding through the alps!

...but the picture doesn't do the mountains justice!

Weird trees in Arles/St. Remy

On day one of our trip in the Van Gogh Museum, Kelsey and I noticed that some of the trees Van Gogh painted looked very odd, knobby, and almost as if he was trying of incorporate figures into the tree branches. Well, after coming to Arles and taking our excursion to St. Remy, where Van Gogh resided as a mental patient in an asylum, we saw that these trees are typical to the landscape of this region. What Van Gogh was portraying was in fact a realistic interpretation of the trees.

Les Alyscamps