Tortellini watch abroad

Greetings from Bologna, land of tortellini and salami, where the blogger page is all in Italian. I am back here after several days in Rome and a stop in Florence. I've kind of reached overload of Beautifully Decorated Old Things, and me the art history major here. It's just a lot to handle to have triumphal arches, Renaissance paintings, and gold leaf at every turn, especially when mixed with the din of mopeds and the constant plague of tourists.

Still, I've enjoyed the touch of heat and all that comes with it, especially yesterday when I bought the elements of my lunch at various stalls of a street market, and ate it on the balcony of my hotel room in the shade overlooking the garden below. The heat brings out the heavy scents of the thousands of flowers climbing the balconies and weighing down the trees too, so I have been walking in a daze of flower fragrance mixed with coffee. Yeah, parts of Italy ARE that good.

We sang in two churches, and the one in Bologna was so large that when we stopped singing, the walls whispered back to us with the echo of our voices for several seconds afterward. In Rome the church was decorated in the best Baroque style, laden with gold and trimmed with coffered ceilings. It was all I could do to focus on the singing with so much to look at in the building.

And so it's been this whole trip- too much to take in that I have reached a point of overload and want to do nothing more than eat cherries on the roof deck here that overlooks the tower-accented view of Bologna. I've enjoyed the trip, but it will be grand to be back in the Land tomorrow.