04 December 2010

A Day in Cortona

Today Kailee,Olivia, Melissa, and I survived our first day trip by ourselves to Cortona. Started the day off almost missing our train because when we arrived to the station we quickly realized our train had changed. Once we found out the change we quickly had to hurry to make it to our train which was just about to depart. Cortona is beautiful to say the least, its a small town high up on a Tuscany hill with an amazing view. Noone really spoke any english but I really enjoyed that part of it. We realized just how friendly and helpful the people of Cortona were. Although we didnt speak the same language they tried and so did we. For example we were catching the bus to head back to catch the train and we had no clue what time to expect the bus, which we had been waiting for a bit. We noticed a woman waiting for the bus and Kailee went over to her and asked her if she knew what time the bus came. The woman spoke no english and started to walk away, but then the woman stoped waved us over and pointed out the time for us on this sign. It was like this throughout the day from a taxi ride by an older man who again spoke little english but he helped us get our train tickets to come back later in the day, showed us where we needed to come to catch the train, and as we rode up to Cortona would stop and point out all the sites on our way up to the town. It truely has amazed me how welcoming and friendly the people of Cortona were today to us.

Cortona was also the town which had the piece of artwork in which I took a look at and wrote a paper during this past quarter. The piece was Fra Angelico's first annunciation he created. Getting to actually see the piece in person was a completly new experience, here I had been researching the painting and the artist and now it was here infront of me. Pictures on the internet do not even come close to what I actually saw today.

I feel very blessed to have experience today with 3 amazing people :)
Ciao! and hello to my family back home!

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