From Bologna - Lucca in 48 Hours

As I sit in bed now at ten a.m. here, I am so thankful that I did not have to wake up and look forward to power walking today. The past two days I have gone on field trips: Bologna with my class, Pisa and Lucca with my room mate's class. It has been exhausting but amazing to see these three cities.

Bologna is Italy's version of a small university town. I loved the aura the city had because it was young and fresh and so much more authentic than most places I have seen so far! I will be going back to visit on my own time, because since I was with my class, we were power walking from church to church for about 10 hours of the day which was not very fun (although I probably burned off a lot of pastry calories haha). We got to see a lot of things but there were three things that I enjoyed in the trip more than anything else.
The first truly interesting thing we saw was Saint Catherine and her chapel. Saint Catherine is the first women artist of Bologna and the only artist to have ever been made into a saint. If there was ever a saint I was going to venerate she would be it. They have a tiny blocked off chapel that you have to have special permission by the nuns to see and Catherine is actually preserved there, sitting up in her nun costume holding a cross. Saint's bodies apparently don't break down so she has been sitting there for 600 years! She is surrounded in the chapel with her manuscripts, paintings, musical instruments, and a crown given to her by the Queen of Spain. However morbid it may seem, it was oddly beautiful in a way to see how much care and work the nuns put into celebrating her and her work even 600 years later.
Another really interesting part of the trip was lunch because it was Bologna! Bologna has a nickname in Italy "la citta grassa" or the fat city. They are known for their food and it is true that they locals truly celebrate it! We were able to walk through the market which was full of various vendors, all yelling at each other in Italian and throwing food around!

I ended up eating ravioli which was amazing. It was simply cooked pasta with olive oil but the ravioli was stuffed with cheese and spinach and there was no way that pasta needed anything else on it. All the food looked amazing and I am looking forward to going back and being able to try something else.
The last thing I'll mention was a science/art museum where we were looking at the wax anatomical studies done by Anna Morandi Manzolini. Her husband was the dean of the school of medicine and when he died she took his place which was a big deal at the time. She did these beautiful anatomical studies looking at the body and it was interesting to look at because she makes this variety of body parts and studies of anatomy so beautiful.

In the room next to her works, there was a wax study done on babies in the womb and all the different problems that can happen in delivery. Although sad, the way these wax figures were done was so interesting to look at since you don't think about how the baby would look on the inside of the body while being delivered.

At the end of the day, since we seemed miserable and tired, Helen (our professor) bought us gelato and I had yogurt e pompermo (grapefruit)! And I successfully made myself stuffed tomatoes for dinner!

The next day, we went to Pisa in the morning and Lucca in the afternoon. They were both interesting places, but I was pretty worn out from the day before so I wasn't as focused. Of course I got to see the leaning tower as well as the baptistry and the cathedral.

We also got to see a Gothic cemetery, which was very different from anything I had ever seen. There were beautiful marble sarcophagi and the bodies were put in the marble floor. So as you walked around, you were walking on top of the resting places of people. But the sculpture in cemetery was beautiful and very interesting to look at.

For lunch, me and Sai ended up wandering farther into Pisa and found a small panini place (which was delicious) and then went and ate in a local park. We ended up having to leave though because some crazy man started throwing corn immediately behind us and the pigeons decided it might be fun to attack! We ended up find this very cute gelato place as well so we ate a huge cup of fruit topped with cream gelato :)

Lucca was a very cute little town and we mainly visited churches and the most interesting thing for me was just seeing all the piazzas and markets.

At the end of the day Helen bought a variety of cakes, which is a Lucca specialty. I tried lemon and St. Zita cake which was a vegetable cake. The St. Zita cake was fantastic!

Today we heard there is a free wine and food tasting at a local market so we are about to make our way there. Ciao!