My inner Gardner’s Art Through the Ages heart was soaring today! The morning started off beautifully; sunshine, birds chirping, and a good nights sleep after yesterday’s lengthy adventure. After my always delightful breakfast of fresh melon with prosciutto, tea, and warm focaccia bread with mixed berry jam, most of us lounged around for the majority of the morning. We worked on finishing up AutoCad projects, researching and test-executing our piazza projects and working on the blog. At exactly 1:12 (not that I’m counting) Christina rang the bell for lunch. The smell of rosted tomatoes, onions, and fish had been daunting us for hours so we were dying with anticipation to see what she had created for us today. Lunch consisted of an amazing fish stew with huge chunks of potatoes, tomatoes, onions, olives and herbs. Served alongside was a wonderful light pasta with pomodoro sauce and salad as always.
After our lengthy lunch (we usually linger around the table for at least an hour or so) and some sneaky stolen pieces of Kavan’s leftover birthday crostada, we headed to the two most popular and well known museums here in Genoa. The Palazzo Rosso (the Red Palace) and the Palazzo Bianco (White Palace) are located essentially across the street from each other on the ritzy Via Ghirabaldi. While the Palazzo Rosso was built between 1671 and 1677, and the Palazzo Bianco was built between 1530 and 1540, both act as fine art galleries for some of the most prominent artists between the 12th and 17th centuries. As an art history major, I was excited to see pieces by Carvaggio, Reubens, and Ven Dyke oh my!
Following the museum tours we headed to Piazza San Luca to hear more about the Piazza assigned to Kelly and Melissa. We discussed the way the piazza is used, who uses it, what it’s comprised of etc. Soon after our tummy’s began to rumble so we set off in search of one thing I had seriously missed since my last jaunt in Italy: KEBABS! Following the kebabs, and my constant need to balance my food ratios (salty to sweet/meat to potatoes) we went and found an amazing gelato place that gave you a huge amount with not the average flavors for only 2.50 euros! We spent the next few hours walking the streets just trying to experience the city on a Friday night (it was just as busy as you’d imagine) and then headed back up to the villa to turn in. The weather has turned on us once again so hopefully tomorrow won’t be as bad as the forecast is predicting (55 and raining, yuck) otherwise we’ll just have to play some cards and look into watching Ratatouille.
I hope you all are enjoying the warmth back home and are having a great and safe Memorial Day Weekend!
Baci e Abbracci (kisses and hugs)!
Lindsay