It's a Side Effect of Being Awesome

Ok, so ten hours is a long flight.

And it’s even longer when you suck at sleeping on planes.

Then it gets even longer when you are immediately thrown into activities for the day.

And even longer when you become painfully aware of just how little you know of the language they speak in this new country…

But when this new country is Italy? It’s totally worth it.

In fact, the jet lag may have turned me into a better human being. For the first time in my life, I am willingly going to be early and waking up early. Is this how people find the drive to exercise??? Because getting up four hours before my first class has done wonders for my motivation. Wonders, I tell you. So, here’s to hoping I keep it up and avoid reverting to my lazy ways.

Anyways, you all are probably more curious about my new living environment, than my new sleeping habits, so I’ll get on to the good stuff. What is Italy like? In my (not) so professional opinion, Italy is what you would get if you mixed the climates of California, Colorado, and Kansas all together and then settled it 3000 years ago… what does that actually look like in real life? Kind of like this:

You’re probably thinking ‘holy crud-monkeys!! That view is amazing!!!!’. How do I know this? Because that is what I was thinking when I saw this for the first time, excessive exclamations points and all. So ya, one of the views from Orvieto is of this picturesque, archetypal Italian castle. Except it isn’t actually a castle, it’s an old abbey turned four star hotel and restaurant which makes it even better.

Is this the view from my own personal terrace? (It’s very important to me that you know I have my own personal terrace.) Sadly no. But if I look really hard, I can see this through the leaves of the tree in front of my own personal terrace so that counts for something, si?

So how is Orvieto itself? Well it’s kind of like you took your favorite picture of Italy from the photobook and made it into a real town. It’s exactly how a small town should be. (I’m looking at you Manhattan, KS)

Long story short, Orvieto is a medieval city on top of a volcanic plug, in the middle of Italy, sandwiched between Firenze and Roma and literally RIGHT next to Tuscany. The streets are shallow and winding, and you can’t walk around with your headphones in because you’ll definitely get run over.

If you’re curious, this is why Italians love Fiats and mopeds, because they’re crazy people who drive modern vehicles on glorified medieval sidewalks. You have been warned.

The first few days were rough, because it’s near impossible to tell where you are or what streets you are on, due to the layout. Especially if you are like me and glued to a map, NEEDING to know where you are, what direction you are pointing, where you are heading, and what the average wind speed velocity is. After a few days, you learn that maps are pointless and just start heading in the general direction of your destination and trust you’ll get there eventually. You don’t navigate off of streets, like in the states, you navigate with landmarks, like this one.

Our Duomo is Cooler than Your Duomo

It’s not an Italian city without it’s own fancy duomo (cathedral) right? Right.

Except ours is cooler. Excluding St. Peter’s Basilica (Roma) and THE Duomo (Florence), Orvieto may just have the coolest cathedral in Italy. Why? You may ask. Well first, Orvieto has been called the city of a hundred Popes. While there haven’t actually been a hundred popes who have lived here, quite a few have. Basically every time a pope was in trouble they came and chilled here. So that makes Orvieto second to the Vatican. Right? Right. (Not Really.)

But that’s not all. Ever heard of the Corpus Christi festival in Catholicism? Well guess what, it originated in Orvieto and this Duomo is where the holy artifact that inspired the festival is held. (Right behind those fancy gold doors.) I won’t go into more detail because that would make this already long post, even longer but there you have it.

*as a side note, if you ever think you’re going to go on vacation in Europe and simply use your phone as your camera, please take a look at the difference between these two pictures, smack yourself, and think again.

But the final touch on our cathedral is this. It wasn’t always this cool, but because it holds a super important artifact, the pope in hiding of the time deemed it necessary to give the simple church an extreme home makeover. And that particular pope happened to be an overachiever, so he decreed the frescoes on the front be made with a special material as well: gold.

So obviously our duomo is one of the coolest because we have shiny yellow stuff on the front of it. Just like how Colorado’s capital building is the coolest, because we have the same shiny yellow stuff on our dome. The logic is tried and true.

And that’s Orvieto 101 for you. I’ll cut it off here because this post got really long, really fast and I don’t want to overload you all with jealousy before I’ve even made it two weeks into the program. For all of those nerds reading this for me (aka my parents) instead of for cool Italy pics, I’ll add another post later this week detailing some of my other adventures around town. For everyone else though, I’ll be back next week with cool ROME pics (mwuahahaha).

Ci vediamo dopo!

(I know, I know. My Italian already rocks. It’s a side effect of being awesome.)