Ferrara

Ok, so the whole week leading up to our Venice trip was full of last minute changes, and this continued on into the Venice trip and Spring Beak.

Instead of going to Ravenna, which I was really looking forward to, we went to Ferrara on our way to Venice. According to the faculty this was to avoid inclement weather in the southern mountain passes we would have been taking to get to the east coast here, and by staying inland we'd be able to take larger roads that would not freeze. Well, in my estimation the weather forecasters in Italy must just suck, period, because the weather that Sunday was awesome, no way there was any problem with snow blocking the passes or whatever... anyway.

Ferrara was a pretty nice town. When we arrived they were letting us know some of the history of the town, and it turns out that this is actually a Renaissance town (founded approximately 1500) which makes it brand new by Italian standards. It's still pretty old.

The main street coming into Ferrara

So Dave and I set off to explore Ferrara for a bit. We found our way to the town's central plaza and cathedral, then stumbled upon the American Embassy where we grabbed a quick lunch.

Nothing like a quick bite of American Embassy food...

After thouroughly enjoying our lunch we set off to explore the town some more, and went to an old castle/fortress in the middle of the city that was pretty neat, and had a tourist information center inside that gave us some rockin' maps.

The fountain is a nice touch, encourages invading armies to be gentle I think.

After a while we found ourselves in Ferrara's central park, which was a pretty cool place. We went horseback riding...

It's not as easy as it looks...

After this we went exploring some more and found a huge monastary and cemetary which had a massive portion dedicated to the local jewish population, sort of a sad memorial to an ethnic group they tried to erase from history only 60 years ago.

Really that's been one of the main things I've been confronted with again and again since we've been in Europe. Nazis, Facists, Communists, they're not gone. They're still hangning on tight in Europe, and the evidence of the amazing ammount of destruction they caused is prevalent throughout all the places we've been. It's not stuff you notice without looking, but as you spend more and more time here its just incredible to see how the marks of Mussolini are all over the place, and how the Soviet Russian culture has still not evaporated, even in places the Soviets never controlled. Its a wierd feeling.

The monastary at the center of the Ferrara cemetary

After we visited the cemetary Dave and I walked down the old city walls, which was pretty cool. We were litterally walking on top of the earthworks that formed the walls, and the view was not too bad.

Dave's smiling because he knows he's right, we're going to be late to the bus.

So Ferrara was a pretty neat town. After we were late to the bus (yes you were right, Dave) we took off and headed to Venice...