Ravenna

Ok, so Ravenna (Monday, April 18th) was really a nice town. We walked around and saw all kinds of sights and sounds, which you can see from the photos. In addition the drive out there and the drive back were both beautiful, giving us a chance to see some parts of the countryside we had never seen before and also to see a part of Arezzo we had never seen before as we drove through it to get to the highway that links the east and west coast of Italy in Tuscany. Remember that to cross the peninsula east-west you have to go over the mountains. Anyway it was a very scenic trip, so here are the pictures:

The countryside on the drive to Ravenna


The interior of a little chapel


Chiesa San Vitale, a famous Byzantine church


Inside San Vitale, some alabaster windows


Really cool mosaics, think of this as what Roman architecture would have been if the empire hadn't fallen


Tiffany and Crystal chillin in San Vitale


The dome of San Vitale


Jim exploding


San Vitale


Nice flowers like this were all over Ravenna


Part of the main square in Ravenna, this building felt very American to me


There were towers like this all over Ravenna


Sydney and I goofing off in Ravenna

So the afternoon in Ravenna we rented some bicycles and rode around town, which was AMAZING. It's so frustrating how slow you have to go to walk everywhere, if we just had bicycles instead of having to walk all the time our lives would be so much easier. And honestly from a global perspective I think that bicycles ought to be promoted as the savior of the future, seriously think about it: on a bike you can go 20 MPH pretty easily so long as it's somewhat flat. Now in an American city that doesn't ammount to much because things are soooo low density and so sprawled out. But in a town like Ravenna (which was BEAUTIFUL by the way) you can cross the town in 10 or 15 minutes on a bike, whereas waking would take probably an hour or more. Now, if more towns were designed at the medium density of Ravenna (and please note there were lots of houses with yards in Ravenna, ok? It was not a crowded medieval setting with stone streets everywhere and tiny little dark alleys) we wouldn't need cars for getting to and from the nearby stuff within town, and we could instead use our cars for medium distance trips, like to the next town over or someplace within the region. Then if we had a good high speed train line linking the major cities you could take really easy fast trips around the country by driving to whatever town had the high speed train in it and blasting away at 450 MPH to the destination of your choice. Anyway, this is an old rant I've had for some time, but I've found it very interesting to see which cities around the world are actually nice to live in and Ravenna has thus far been one of my favorites.

Ok so that's the Ravenna trip, one more little post with regards to current events etc and I'm off to London!