James studied in Macerata, Italy for 3 months last spring. I went to visit for his last week.
The pictures below are taken at Maracua, the cafe close to school. James spend many a languid afternoon sipping esspresso there. Well okay maybe not but it does sound nice.
There were these funny water fountains all over town with potable, deliciously cold water.
It was really really hot! This is in James' bedroom where he slept in a hammock bed .
I went on a few day trips while James finished his final project. The church below supposedly holds the house of Mary. It's in Loretto a small town few hours by bus from Macerata. I was harrased by the police on the bus ride because I didn't realize that I had to punch my ticket when I got on the bus. The officer was upset because there was another passenger who had no ticket or identificaiton. I had a difficult time explaining my situation in italian to the police officer. Compounded by the fact that i had no idea what the address of James' apt was. I finally made him laugh explaining that the apt was above the pharmacy on a street with lots of cars. How much of my italian/spanish interpretation he understood isn't clear but anyway he let me off the hook. I was glad that I happend to have a copy of my passport. Then after things settled down I realized that we had just passed Loretto. I asked the bus driver who confirmed and let me off in the middle of nowhere so I could hoof it back. Anyway the town wasn't that special but I met lots of nice Italians that day who spoke no english.
After my day of adventure I decided that I deserved a day off. So I took the train (far more straightforward) to Civitanova to hang out on the beach. it was strange. The beach was covered with these chairs for miles. You had to pay a nominal fee to reserve a chair for the day. It was actually quite lovely and the umbrella was crucial.
We spent two days in Rome before heading back to the US. Our friend Iain treated us to an awesome hotel on the outskirts of town for our wedding gift. The hotel was absolutely beautiful and it was in a nice quiet neighborhood walking distance from the center of the city.
Unfortunately James got sick the last night in Rome so he spent the evening in the bathroom and still felt under the weather the next morning when we caught our flight home.
And fish and chips with our parents fattened us up. Below is James with his parents Chris and Lynn.
Oh and how can I forget . . . we camped near Burlington VT. Our neighbors had a spotlight on their RV that shined into our tent which was awesome and the people next to them had a satellite so that they wouldn't have to miss any of their favorite shows and a projector so that they could watch them outside. Not the kind of camping I'm used to but definitely an interesting experience.
