Tarquinia & the Sculpture Garden

Wednesday we visited an Etruscan museum in Tarquinia. We had an awesome drive with the painting teacher, Judy. She's absolutely hilarious. And a little scary....
Overall, museum was alright. We looked at a lot of dead people stuff like pots, jewelery, bones, sarcophagi, etc the building used to be a castle and was really beautiful. It had three floors and you could see far out to the ocean when on the top floor. Afterward, Laura took us to get gelato because we had told her Darrell bought us some and she needed to step it up!
After the very fun night before, Jordan and I decided to take the night easy and hung out on the roof for a while until a couple of guys who also live in the residence came up. They turned out to be pilots in training, and we chatted with them for a while and they were pretty nice too.

Thursday was the usual classes, but we had our first critique in photo which was great and really helpful! We had dinner at a small restaurant that served gnocchi in red sauce, potatoes, and a mixed meat plate. Needless to say, I was very full. But Jordan and I left a little early to get started on some art history homework and ended up trying to do some laundry in the bidet of her room. Ummmm welll.... that sure was an experience! I can't wait to go home to a real washing machine!
And finally, Friday we went to Cerverteri to look at some tombs, and then back to Tarquinia for lunch and another look at the tombs there and the museum.
We then went off to the Tyrrhenian Sea to swim for an hour. It was beautiful but so very warm!

Afterward we went to what is called the Tarot Garden, a huge sculptural piece designed by an artist names Nikki de Saint Phalle. This image hardly speaks for how incredibly amazing this garden is. It's multiple huge structures all with a beautiful multicolored, eclectic, intricate facade of mosaic glass.
I can't even put into words how amazing this place is. The larger buildings you are able to walk inside and climb on, some have balconies and bridges, and to the left of what's in this picture is a very large woman that on the inside was transformed into a house for the artist, where she lived for the duration of this project. There's a kitchen, dinning and living area, bathroom, bedroom, and the walls are completely covered in different shapes and sizes of cut glass which makes it so incredibly remarkable to look at. I'm incredibly upset that my camera's battery died just after I took a few shots (because I'm a bad photog and hate batteries).

The rest of the weekend was spent relaxing during the day, and enjoying the night life with some of our new Italian friends. I've had so much good pizza and everyone we've met here has been so much fun. Today while getting more gelato for photo (I had white chocolate, wow that was heaven in my mouth) I started thinking about how I'm really not going to like coming back home after all of this.... Sorry mom!