I was definitely wrong when I thought I'd have relaxing 3-day weekends here in Italia.  No such luck.

This past weekend I went on two all-school trips through Syracuse.  These are optional trips for all students studying through Syracuse that we paid for with our tuition.  The school provides transportation, a TA or professor as a guide, and lodging overnight if necessary.  Pretty sweet deal.  The downside?  Meeting the bus at 730am.

On Friday, I went to Assisi, which is about an hour by bus from Firenze.  Assisi is famous as the birthplace of St. Francis or San Francesco.  The town is a pilgrimage point for those who want to see the final resting place of St. Francis.  The Basilica of San Francesco d'Assisi has two levels and is home to a Franciscan monestary - the order of friars started by St. Francis.

It amazes me how big these churches are and how ornate they are inside - I just don't think I'd ever have the patience to do a project on that level.  I do, however, love seeing the artwork that I'm learning about in my art history class.  I think in the US we get used to seeing these great works in books and on the computer, but here, you walk around the block and oh, there's the Duomo.  So after some free time and gelato eating in Assisi, we boarded the buses back to school.

Saturday morning I woke up and biked to school.  It was the first morning I didn't feel like I was going to get run over - maybe because Italians know not to be awake at 7am on a Saturday.  Ravenna was a little farther than Assisi, two hours on the bus, but it was the perfect time to nap.  We made a quick stop in Classe on the way to Ravenna to see the mosaics in the main church there to be able to compare them to what we saw in Ravenna.

This trip was a little more hectic, but Ravenna is a bigger city than Assisi, and it served as the capital of the Roman Empire at one point, so the buildings really reflect how important Ravenna once was.  With our professor, we took the speed-walking tour of 3 churches and a baptistery, and we saw the tomb of Dante.  After my day at Assisi, I could actually walk into a church in Ravenna and guess at the symbolism of the mosaics on the ceiling.  It's probably very basic knowledge, but for an art history novice I was proud of myself!

I had lunch and split a litre of wine with two friends that afternoon in Ravenna, and had another great nap on the way home.  Sad story though - when I got off the bus at school, I saw my bike had been stolen.  The lock was simply laying there having been cut with what had to be an industrial tool.  Not cool, Florence, but it happens.

AND THEN I slept in on Sunday until noon!  Happy day.