Submitted by Julie Dumont on the 2019 winter session study abroad program in Italy sponsored by the Department of Philosophy…
Hello again! Week three is over and it’s our last week of the program here in Italy. We spent eight days in Volterra mainly focusing on classes, but we took two different excursions to Siena and Pisa. Siena was a nice little city where we saw the famous Duomo. Then in Pisa, we got to go to the top of the tower which was 300 steps and of course, we all took funny Pisa pictures. In Pisa, we also got to see the birthplace of Galileo which is cool because we studied him in class. We arrived in Venice yesterday afternoon and it has been an amazing experience. So far, in Venice, we have toured the Doge’s Palace. Something I learned about the palace is that there were prison cells and interrogation rooms built into the palace itself. Casanova is a famous escapee of this prison and we got to see the cells he was kept in. We also got to see some of the flooding that goes on in Venice. Since it is a manmade island, high tide makes the streets flood. We will spend two more days here in Venice before going back to Rome to end our adventures. It is sad to think this program only has a week left, but in these past three weeks this group of 15 people has seen so much of Italy and gone through so much together, I know we have all changed due to this experience. I am exciting to go home and share all these amazing things with friends and family and start spring semester at UD!
