On Sunday, everyone returned from midterm break, which means that we are a little more than half way through our time in Italy. For midterm break we had girls go to Germany, England, France, Ireland, Austria, and more!

This week we visited the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel with our wonderful guide, Magdalena. Unfortunately, the weather hasn’t been too cooperative and we’ve had a lot of rain lately, so that makes our tours a little more challenging.  This was our final trip to Vatican City as we’ve already visited St. Peter’s Basilica and explored the tombs within the basilica, as well. Being able to explore Vatican City as extensively as we have has been incredible! Thanks to our program, we’ve had wonderful tour guides who have been extremely thorough and informative. For example, did you know that there are no paintings inside of St. Peter’s Basilica? All of the artwork within the basilica is mosaics and they’re all breathtaking. If you look closely, you can see all of the individual tile…

As students who are interested in art, Vatican City has been very informative and eye opening for us. From the construction of the basilica, the interior mosaics, the columns surrounding St. Peter’s square, and the immaculately detailed altarpiece, Vatican City has an element that each one of the students in our group loved. Personally, the baldacchino was my favorite part!

All of the field trips that we’ve taken have been excellent, but our time in Vatican City has definitely been a standout!
Ciao!
-Stephanie Pappas

One part of this journey that I overlooked was who I would be living with when I was in Italy. As soon as we arrived we were all assigned rooms. My room is the smallest room on campus. There are four of us, two upstairs and two downstairs. This has been one of the best aspects of this trip because the girls in my room have become very close. Each room has been given a different name.  The names are the Italian names for different cities- Roma (Rome), Siena (Siena), Firenze (Florence), and my room Venezia (Venice). We have an award that is given to a different room each week based off of different things such as cleaning or helping out around the palace. This has created a little competition among the rooms. Venezia has won it once and it is looking like we might win it again this week.

It is easy to bond with people when you are living together but even easier when you are living in a foreign country. We bond over losing wifi, hot water and heat. We are assigned different tasks together such as cleaning the kitchen for a week or having trash duty. We have been able to get to know each other because not only are we all in the same room, but we also listen to each others conversations on the phone or with other people on the trip since there isn’t really any where to be alone. I have loved this incredible program and the way they do things such as the rooming situation. I feel very blessed to be part of such a great legacy.
 
Emily Parker

One aspect of Italy that we are all thoroughly enjoying here is the food! Everyone’s love for pasta, gelato, coffee, and wine is starting to become evident by our tightening pants sizes. Luckily we walk most of it off touring our way through Italian cities on field trips – it’s a hard life over here.
Some of our favorite places to eat out in Ariccia include BBQ (don’t be fooled, they don’t serve barbecue) where the program hosted the welcome dinner our first night here, and a small family owned restaurant across the street with delicious red sparkling wine.

What we love even more than eating out though, is the delicious food we can make at home thanks to our weekly cooking lessons with Mary Lou! With her expertise and guidance all twenty-two of us can now make carbonara, mushroom risotto, tiramisu, and much more! She has been very patient working with all our gluten, dairy, onion, and other allergies.

With Cinzia and Sandra’s help we have learned enough Italian to successfully shop at the local grocery store, butcher’s shop, and frutteria. Everything we need to make a traditional Italian meal in the palace kitchen!
When we are looking for a quick snack or pick-me-up, the go-to is gelato or a cappuccino.  Luckily for us, there is the cutest coffee bar right across the street from the palace where the sweet owners draw chocolate flowers on our cappuccinos and have even gotten plastic cups so we can have “take-away”.

As far as gelato goes, it’s hard to go wrong. The cheesecake gelato we found during our class trip to Florence is pretty hard to beat though.

No better way to immerse yourself in Italian culture than through delicious food!
Christy Rolf

It is hard to believe we are already almost halfway done with this semester! These past few weeks have really flown by, mostly because we have been having so much fun and have stayed so busy!  I can’t believe that it has been two weeks since we set out for our adventures in Venice and Florence.  One of my favorite aspects of our program is the fact that it allows us to all travel together to see these ancient cities. There is no better way to really get to know someone then by traveling with them, luckily everyone in the program gets along great! The closeness of our group really adds to the experience and makes these magnificent places we get to visit and see that much more enjoyable! We are lucky that we all live together and are able to relive our favorite memories constantly. Whether they are memories that that we made while traveling around Italy together, or weekend trips to other parts of Europe. It is so exciting to meet back at the palace Sunday evening and hear about everyone’s travels. This past weekend a group of us went to Amsterdam and another went to Paris, when we all returned home we talked about how out trips were, got advice for future trips, and all agreed how nice it was to be back home in the Palace. Having a home-away-from-home place like the Palazzo Chigi really does make a world of difference when it comes to comfort. We are incredibly lucky to have such an amazing program that can provide this for us.

 

Enjoying the view after making the climb to the top of the Duomo in Florence.