Sunday morning we got up and packed the apartment so we could go off on our next adventure! We hit the road on our way to Sant'arcangelo di Romagna, a small town with a big castle!
The sky was looking kind of cloudy but the rain held off!
Soon enough, we arrived in the town and I have to say, it was definitely one of my favorite places I've visited so far. The lifestyle there is still very traditional and the houses look like they might have come from a historical movie.
I would haved loved to take more pictures of the houses, but people lived in them and I felt like a creeper taking pictures of peoples houses. I think you'd probably feel creeped on too if someone started taking photos right by your kitchen window with you standing there, don't you think?
So we started walking through town checking things out. Unfortuately we didn't find out until we got there that we couldn't get into the castle because it wasn't open for viewing that day. Apparently people still live in these crazy big castles, so when it's open is at their discrestion. It's nearly impossible to take an impressive photo of a castle when you feel like an ant next to it, so I'll include this photo from Google images so you can see what the whole thing looks like in a flattering image.
Thank you, Mario! But our princess is in another castle!
Although we couldn't get in we could still get very near to take some photos and the town was gorgeous so it was totally worth it. Here are a few of the photos we took!
The view of the rest of the town from a high point on our climb up to the castle.
A pomagranite tree!
This is what we could see of the castle from the outside. Super cool!
These ruins were turned into a house or a restaurant on the other side, it was hard to tell.
Chiara took this photo of the clock tower from a pretty cool angle underneath the basket of flowers.
The doors all over Italy amaze me. This is one of the simpler ones but the attention to detail and the fact hat despite their age, they still remain solid and standing is fascinating. I think the details in every little thing are what make Italy amazing.
On our way back down to the center of the town, I learned who truly runs the city...
It's definitely the cats.
This one controls traffic. He was very friendly and let me pet him. They just do whatever they want to and come and go as they please.
This cat makes the curfews. You can't go out during his napping hours.
What does he do in the city? The same thing most politicians do... This cat just gives zero shits.
Anyway, we were determined to see a castle and since this one was closed, we decided to go find ourselves a new castle (totally casually...).
It's the Shire! The view on our way up to Castle #2.
Maybe our princess is in THIS castle!
Dozza Castle.
The kitchen had some pretty cool contraptions. We think the wood ones were for something to do with meat preparation.
On the back wall, you could light fires below the top of it and roast or grill things on the top.
Super cool collection of lanterns.
After the kitchen, we headed over to the prision. You could walk around inside and look at the writing on the walls.
Here was the higher security dungeon. We couldn't go down because, clearly from the ladder, it wasn't safe. But apparently if you went down you could see the shackles still on the walls.
Carvings on the wall by prisoners often said their name and when they were incarcerated. They must have been there a while if they had time to carve the stone out like this.
Here's some art on the wall by a prisioner which looks suspiciously like the TARDIS... Does anyone else see that or is it just me?
Unfortunately my camera died very shortly after this, but I captured most of the super cool things. We took some more pictures with Chiara's camera which I'll try to upload if I get a chance. We got to go up into the turret of the castle and see pretty far out, which was really fun. I'd post more about the history of the castle, but most of the signs they posted around didn't really make sense, in Italian or in English, but we know it was built in 1250 and a lot of changes have been made over the years.
After that we headed back to Bologna and called it a weekend! It was really cool getting to go around those two towns and check out the inside of a castle. I can't wait to see more of them.
Sorry I'm getting a little behind, I'll post my adventures in Florence soon! Probably when I get to London as I'll be spending the rest of my day today trying to figure out how I'm going to survive when I get there tomorrow. I haven't been doing too much the last 3 days, just trying to take it easy and get caught up on everything I need to do. Working on your resume is hard! Everything has to be exactly perfect and each word counts! I also had to order my bedding and do some things for work, but now I think I'm mostly caught up! Yay! So tomorrow bright and early I'll fly to London and try to get myself settled in there. So many things to do! I have to go buy all of the necessities, as there are so many things I don't have yet, and move in and get enrolled in classes. Not to mention, I don't even know what books I need yet! Classes start on Wednesday so I have a feeling I'll be at the mercy of the bookstores for book prices. Oh well! We'll get it all figured out over the next few days.
Good-bye Italy! I will miss you and all of your great people and wonderful food. (Every time I mention going to London, Chiara's family laughs at how bad the food is and how I'll be dying to come back to Italy!) Thanks so much to Chiara and her family for hosting me the last two weeks, it was great and I had such a good time!
I can't believe you tried to go to a castle and it was closed so you just casually went to another castle. That's so cool though! And that was some impressive investigative journalism where you exposed the shadow government of the cats. Looks like so much fun! Good luck on your way to London!
ReplyDelete