Wherein Katie Gets to Use Nifty Little Accent Marks

I am very quickly losing my mind—if it weren’t for our (very detailed) schedule of the week, and my camera, I would have no clue what we did two hours ago, much less two days ago. Anyway, it’s Sunday, and appropriately enough our first visit was to a church—so let’s get started!

We were woken up (theoretically—actually, if I hadn’t already been half awake, I would have slept straight through the very quiet announcement) at 6:00, to be off the boat at 6:30 in Palermo. We all somehow managed to get ourselves packed up and back on Fabio bus, and promptly went back to sleep as we were driven off to our first stop for the morning—Cefalù (nifty little accent marks!) We ate breakfast in Cefalù, where I had my first ever cannolo (like a panino sandwich, for some reason we Americans tend to use the plural forms cannoli and panini for the singular—the Sicilians gave us funny looks). It was very yummy, but a little too sweet and heavy for first thing in the morning.

Cannolo and cappuccino, nom nom nom.

I swear the Italians make everything edible not only delicious, but also gorgeous--this was just a tiny little shop off the main plaza, and it had the most gorgeous pastries.

Anyway, after we’d all had our breakfast and our coffees, and had nominally woken up a bit more, we headed into the Cefalù cathedral. The architecture is quite lovely, and I certainly do have pictures, but Christian buildings are really not my area of study, so I don’t have much to say about them beyond "oh look, pretty!" I can certainly copy from my notes though!

The cathedral architecture is a Norman-Byzantine hybrid with a Romanesque monumental style, fortress-like elements, and a deliberate shift from Gothic architecture. Now if only I actually know what all those notes meant...:)

The view of the main aisle, once inside. I'm sorry, I know there are proper terms for the way the cathedral is laid out, but I don't remember them. Please educate me and I'll correct this!

I'm always impressed by mosaics so huge and finely-made that they appear to be paintings--and apparently in this case, impressed enough that I forgot that flash won't damage mosaics the way it will paint, so it's unfortunately blurry (I later found a very useful setting on my camera, so there shouldn't be too many more pictures that are quite this blurry). This mosaic, set in the nave of the church, is the largest figural mosaic in the Byzantine world.

This is one of the little side altars, entirely gilded. Again, my cathedral vocabulary is sadly lacking...yet apparently I can memorize the major decorative aspects of a Doric temple. Hrm. I suspect it has something to do with what I'm likely to be tested on.

After the cathedral, we got special access (Franco Surprise!) to the cloisters, which were much more my sort of thing—a large rectangular courtyard, with a roofed hallway surrounding it. The roof was supported with sets of double columns that each had a different scene from four parts of the Bible—Genesis, The Song of Songs, Gospel, and Apocalypses. My general apathy for Christian iconography warred with my love for columns and marble and promptly lost, so there’s lots of pictures of these. No worries, I won't post all of them.

The beautiful and wonderfully peaceful cloisters. Also, an Italian palm tree. And me.

A line of the very cool columns. Sadly, I can't tell you which section this came from--I'm not sure I knew even when I was there.

There was a truly impressive range of subjects. Here is a lovely pair of griffins.

Noah's Ark! Sadly, I don't think the griffins made it on board in time.

I have no clue what this is. I just found the level of detail fascinating.

After Cefalù, we hopped back on the bus to head to Taormina for lunch and to see the Greco-Roman theater there. And I really do mean Greco-Roman, in a uniquely classical sense—it’s a fascinating blend of the two styles of theaters. Generally the Romans would adapt Greek theaters to look more like their ideal theater, but in this case the blending left quite a bit of the original Greek style. But first, kitty pictures!

I spotted this little kitten on my way up the hill toward the theater after lunch. Unfortunately, this little one was skittish, so I couldn't get any closer.

This guy, on the other hand, was not at all skittish--we were waiting under an overhang to avoid the rain, and this kitty was hanging out on this mat. He gave us a "just don't step on me" look and proceeded to ignore us, as cats do.

On to the theater proper--this is the cavea, the seating area. The random white blotch is presumably my camera catching a raindrop at the wrong time.

This should give you a slightly better idea of the scale of this theater--unfortunately, I can't find the precise number of spectators it can hold, but it's the second largest Greek theater in Sicily, after Syracuse.

This is the backdrop of the theater--the Romans built up the brick back wall to make a permanent stage background, while the Greeks preferred a majestic natural view as their backdrop, as you can see behind the ruins of the Roman wall.

Here's more of the view from behind the wall. Isn't it gorgeous? I took a ton of pictures just of this view. While it was still a little rainy, the moisture in the air turned the trees the most brilliant emerald green, and the water below was a spectacularly deep blue.

My best shot of the theater as a whole--it's quite large, and while there are some nice places to stand up around the top (you can climb up the side of the hill so that you're level with the top of the backdrop), there's no way to get the whole theater in one shot.

There were small arched niches at the very top of the cavea. I'm five feet tall. I'm sure you all can do the math as to why this photo had to exist :) Also, it gives you a picture of my trusty head-warming friend, the Tacky Hat (TM). The last time I was in Italy, the weather turned unexpectedly cold toward the end of the week and we were suffering because one of our last visits was in Tivoli, up in the hills. So naturally, we all raided the nearby tourist shops, and even though I had been successful in avoiding typical touristy souvenirs thus far, I was cold enough to pay way too much for a hat that just screams "look at me, I'm a tourist!" It's a nice, warm hat though, and I like telling the story, so I haven't been in that big a hurry to replace it. You'll see Tacky Hat in lots of photos, particularly as it gets colder.

Back down the hill a bit, there was also a (tiny!) Roman theater, where we were the only tourists. There was a cat though!

Hello kitty!

This is the smallest theater I've ever seen. It may not even be a theater--I also heard it called an odeon, a small Greek structure for singing events, which would make more sense...except that it's definitely a Roman construction. Either way, it's adorable, and it's tucked away on a little side street, so you're in among a bunch of apartments and shops and all of a sudden there's stairs down to a ruin. Italy's kinda awesome like that. This picture was taken standing about where the back wall of the stage would have been--the arch to the right leads from the stage into a vaulted corridor.

I found a piece of column that was short enough and out in the open for me to sit on, so naturally I had to get a picture taken.

Here's Professor Scott demonstrating the acoustics of the theater. As you can see, it's really not a large area.

We also inadvertently proved our immense trust in Roman concrete—about five of us had climbed up on top of the arch in order to get an overhead view, and didn’t realize (until Professor Scott pointed it out) that the part we were all standing on consisted entirely of approximately four inches of concrete and a few bricks—with about seven feet of empty space underneath. Oops!

Yeah, we got down fairly quickly after that. Some of the Centristi were brave enough to go up again, but the part they're on is a lot thicker than the edge.

We had a little bit of free time before we had to get back on the bus, and a few of us followed the professors to one last ruin. Have you noticed that we're all a little on the obsessive side? How many students do you know that would say "oh, cool, more lectures!" when they have another option?

Sadly, there's not a lot known about this one, most of what's remaining is the wall on the right. It had a lot of niches, presumably for statues, and somewhere out there is a truly hilarious picture of the approximately eight of us who stayed, standing in statue-like poses in one of the niches. I really need to find a copy of that picture.

When we were done in Taormina, we jumped on the bus on our way to Syracuse for the night. I'm writing this post (and most of them, really) on the bus, so I'm making more typos than usual--hopefully I'll catch them all before I find a way to upload these, but if I make any really egregious ones, please let me know!