Follow The Women's Basketball Team As They Travel Italy!

Senior forward Bri Flanders will blog on the daily happenings of the women's hoops team as they visit Italy. Check out the latest post and photos from their journey abroad.

If you are on facebook, also be sure to check out Bri's photo album.

January 2, 2010 - Last Entry

Today was our last official day in Italy. We spent most of it in Milan. Milan is such a pretty city. Elena told us that a lot of the city had to be rebuilt after World War II, so a lot of the buildings are very modern. We began our visit to the city with a guided tour. It lasted about an hour and we saw the Sforza Castle, the Galleria, La Scala and the city square, and the Duomo Cathedral.

After the tour we were able to explore the city on our own for about 4 hours, the most time we have ever had in one place. A lot of the travel party went off on their own, visiting museums, shopping and having lunch in a local caf. I managed to visit the Duomo Cathedral, La Scala and the museum in the Sforza castle.

The Duomo cathedral was magnificent. It was so large and had so much detail in its construction. The cathedral is Gothic, so there are tons of sculptures and spires around the facade. Typical gothic structures have multiple flying buttresses to help distribute the weight of the marble walls, the Duomo cathedral has massive columns inside to help keep it standing. The inside of the cathedral was gorgeous. Huge tapestries and paintings lined the main sanctuary and there was stained glass everywhere. Above the main altar was a red light. This light was showing where the church housed a nail from the cross that Jesus was crucified on. Apparently, the nail is removed only during specific times and shown to the public. The rest of the time is held in the wall during all other times. Some of the girls were able to wait in line to go to the roof of the cathedral. They had spectacular views of the surrounding area of Milan they had great pictures. I will send those in once we get back home.

Once we were done at the cathedral, my mom and I headed back through the Galleria, which is a large collection of stores all contained under a high glass ceiling. We had walked through this place on the tour and had stopped to look at a mosaic on the floor. The mosaic depicts a bull, which has significance to Italians because Turin (with the root of the word being toro, which means bull) was the first capital of the country. Throughout the years, it has become a belief that if someone puts their left heel in the groove in the middle of the mosaic and turns around, they will get good luck. Of course, many of us did it, hoping that there is some truth to this belief.

After the Duomo and the Galleria, I visited La Scala, the famous Opera house in Milan. It was beautiful. I was so impressed with the intensity of colors within the performance area even though the building is so old. One bit of history that we learned while on the tour was that during the unification of Italy, the square that La Scala is currently part of actually had houses on the land. These houses were demolished and the city hall and other public buildings were built. The rest of the museum in La Scala had backdrops and costumes worn during previous shows held in the theater.

After La Scala, my mother and I sat down for lunch at a local caf called Caf Dante. The caf had a seating area outside with space heaters. It was nice, but I was really thankful for the heaters since today was the coldest of the week, even though it was the sunniest day. I had gnoccheti al pesto and my mother had ravioli with asparagus. Both pasta dishes were so good. That is definitely going to be one the things I most miss about Italy: the great food.

After lunch, we continued down via Dante back towards the Sforza castle. The museum in the castle holds many of the art that was in Milan throughout the citys existence. Some of the art dated back to the fourth century AD. The highlights of this museum included work by Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo.

The Da Vinci work was a fresco painted on the wall of tone of the rooms within the castle. I was slightly disappointed with piece. I guess I was expecting some sort of Madonna painting, but all I got was fragments of a painting that looked like bricks on the wall. They were obviously Da Vinci, but still not what I was hoping for. The Michelangelo piece though was really interesting. It was the Pieta Rondanini, one of the last sculptures that he worked on before he died. It was really cool to see the different approaches that were being taken. There was one completely detached arm and Mary had two faces. According to the summaries, Michelangelo changed the subject of this sculpture from a depiction of the Deposition, to the more complete depiction of Mary holding a limp body of Christ.

The rest of the time spent was done doing a little shopping for last minute gifts. The team returned to the hotel and had a entire travel party end of trip dinner. After dinner everyone returned to their room to pack for our 3:30 am departure for our flight. Im pretty sure the team has decided to stay up until then, almost to ensure that we will sleep at some point during the 10 hours we will be in the air tomorrow.

I hope that this blog has been helpful for all our friends of WSC Womens Basketball out there. I know the girls and I have had a fun time trying to explain what we have been doing and the fun things that we have experienced. If you are a member of Facebook, please check out all the photos from our week long trip to Italy. Im sure that the rest of the team will have their pictures up just as soon as we wake up after getting home tomorrow evening.

Please come help support us as we begin our second semester games against Eastern Connecticut State University on Wednesday January 6th at 7. Any questions about our trip or upcoming events, just let us know!!!

Arrivederci!

Bri

Photo Gallery

Photo Captions: The first three pictures are of the Sforza Castle, La Scala and the inside of the Domou Cathedral; the next photo is of Da Vinci's sculpture in the Sforza and the last photo is the Pieta Rondanini

January 1, 2010

Today the travel party visited the city of Turin (Torino) in North Western Italy. After the festivities from last night, we were all happy with the 2 hour bus ride because we were able to get some more sleep. The strange thing about the first of the New Year is that the majority of stores are closed since it is a holy day. According to Elena (our tour guide), most stores will open on the 2nd and have major sales. The visit was not a total waste for shopping as there were many sidewalk stands selling scarves, hats and gloves, and miscellaneous jewelry.

I was excited to visit Turin because it was the last city to hold the winter Olympics back in 2006. I was hoping that there would be some things left over from when the city hosted the events, but there was nothing left, so I was a little disappointed.

We only had two hours to spend in the city, so most of the group just walked around the square and had lunch at one of the few cafes that were open. Others went in search of nearby churches and visited the numerous castles that Turin has in its center from when it once was the capital of Italy. In the middle of the main square were two castles. The Palazzo Reale, is the bigger of the two in the immediate center, stretching along an entire side of the square. The castle housed the Savoy family. The Palazzo Reale is standing on land that previously had 3 churches on it. In the back of the courtyard, there was a mosaic floor of a map of the world and Wheel of Fortune that was found when construction was taking place. It was really interesting to see. Professor Semerjian, Mrs. Liberatore, and Professor Brownlee all made comments about the Da Vinci Code being connected to this mosaic but I somehow missed the connection completely. The mosaic was actually located behind the Duomo di San Giovanni Battista, or the Chapel of the Holy Shroud. I know very little about the history of the Shroud of Turin, but this was the chapel that the shroud is held in. Unfortunately, like most of the local shops, the church was closed because it is the 1st of January.

My mother and I were able to walk around the castle and explore its gardens, which had a temporary ice skating constructed in it as well. I find it funny that in almost every city we have visited there has been an ice skating rink. While in the gardens, I got a great view of the Mole Antonelliana, which is a giant steel construction that is the Italian equivalent to Paris’ Eiffel Tower.

On the ride back from Turin, again most everyone slept though not before we saw a great view of the Swiss Alps. These mountains seemed larger and had much more snow covering them, than the other ones we had seen. I may be completely mistaken and they could possibly be the same mountains just with more snow – it has been raining here lately.

The rest of the night was spent relaxing in the hotel, having a lot of team bonding time. We ordered room service for dinner (again because the local restaurants and shops are closed) and afterwards just hung around.

Tomorrow we head to Milan for the day for massive amounts of shopping!!

Arrivederci per ora!

Bri

Photo Gallery

Photo Captions: The photos in their order are: the Plazzo Reale; Duomo di Giovani Battista; Mosaic of World Map & Wheel of Fortune; Mole Antonelliana

December 31, 2009

Today was a pretty relaxing day. Unfortunately it was very gray and dreary and rained all day. In the morning, we had no official plans, so some of the travel party walked to the center of Cantu. There were several streets lined with clothing stores and small cafes. Some of the girls bought some pasta or Italian pastries while some bought souvenirs. The center also has a very nice church that was built during the 10th century. Stasia and Kaleigh were able to go inside and hopefully a few of us will be able to attend mass in the morning.

After visiting Cantu, the whole travel party took the bus to Como. The city is very nice and extremely pretty. We got to the city a little early so we were able to explore the markets before meeting up with our tour guide. Like in Verona, the city had constructed a skating rink. After the tour, Coach (Tessmer) and her young daughter Lily went skating and said they had a great time.

We met up with our tour guide Robbie, who gave us the option of taking a boat tour on the Lake. Obviously the group voted to go on a boat tour. During the tour we were able to see many of the villas that line the shore of Lake Como. Unfortunately because the weather was not the greatest we could not see all of the mountains. I had mentioned yesterday that we would not be able to see where George Clooney lives. While on the boat tour, we were only able to see where he lived, but not the actual houses (he owns 3). The only way we would have been able to see the houses was if we took the 3 hour tour. We also got to see Sophia Loren’s and Versace’s homes. We also saw the villa that was used in the movie Ocean's Twelve starring - you guessed it - George Clooney!

After the boat tour, we headed further into the center of town to see Como’s prized cathedral Duomo (not to be confused with the famous Duomo in Milan, which we will visit on Saturday). The most interesting part of the cathedral is the mixture of architectural types. The cathedral has themes of medieval, gothic, Romanesque, and romantic. It was obvious that resident’s of Como hold this cathedral in high regard. Robbie often referred to the church as “her’s”. Inside the cathedral was beautiful. There were multiple tapestries and paintings lining the walls. Also the gothic vaulted ceilings were painted with blue and gold. Everything in this cathedral was so beautiful. In the front of the church were two massive altars. They nearly reached the ceilings. It was so beautiful and so interesting, since the church was being set up for night mass.

After going through the cathedral, we had more time to explore the city on our own. Most of us went further down the streets away from the lakeside and stopped in the local stores. So far everywhere we’ve been has been somewhat expensive, but we are hoping that once we head to Milan on the second there will be many sales because of the new year.

For our Italian New Year’s celebration, we had dinner at the hotel restaurant with the entire travel party. It was a wonderful meal, as all of them have been so far. We had pasta with cream sauce and prosciutto, a chicken dish with potatoes and salad, and chocolate cake for dessert.

Around 11:30 the team walked to the center of Cantu where we were told a celebration usually happens with local music. When we got there, the entire square was deserted except for a few locals throwing noise makers around. We continued to walk around, but all the stores and most of the local cafes were closed. We waited until midnight, where the locals continued to shoot off noisemakers – which seemed to get progressively louder and thrown closer to our general direction. We made it fun though. A few of us started a game of Red Rover and most of those gathered in the square started watching the game. It was a lot of fun though. Since Italy is 6 hours ahead, we plan on staying awake for a while later, and possibly call home.

Tomorrow the group is heading to Turin (Torino) where the Winter Olympics were held a few years back.

Arrivederci per ora!!!

Bri

Photo Gallery

Photo Captions: The pictures in orders are: A view of Lake Como; Versache Villa; the Villa used in Ocean's 12; Sophia Loren's Villa; Como's Duomo Cathedral; The Church in Cantu at night

December 30, 2009

Today we crossed the northern border of Italy and traveled to Lugano, Switzerland. The bus ride was rather short in comparison to our other trips, only about an hour long. During this trip we travelled through the Swiss Alps, and when I say through, I mean that we drove through tunnels that were literally carved out of the mountains. The trip was really nice, and we got to see Lake Como for the first time. It was so beautiful!!! Elena (the tour guide) told us that unfortunately we will not be able to see George Clooney’s villa because it is on the other end of the lake in comparison to where we will be visiting tomorrow.

Lugano is a wonderful city. It is surrounded by the Alps and is also a lakeside city. It has a very nice lake promenade that follows the shore. According to Elena, the city promotes modern art, and the promenade is lined with modern sculptures. My mom and I tried to walk down to the Foliculare, a cable car that travels up the side of one of the mountains. After passing the road we were supposed to turn down, we finally found the station only to find out that the cars are not running until January. We weren’t completely depressed that we couldn’t head up the mountain, mainly because it began to rain.

The center of town is lined with shops, much more expensive than we are used to in the states. As we got off the bus, we were greeted with a Louis Vuitton store only to be followed by Versace, Bulgari, and the most expensive jewelry store, Bucherer. The cheapest thing that they had displayed was a diamond ring for $900. They also had a $17000 cell phone for sale, though Stasia (Twomey), Kaleigh (Charette) and I couldn’t figure out why anyone would buy it. Apparently, Lugano has about 55,000 inhabitants, and 64 banks within its city limits.

We had lunch in the city and a few of the girls went to a local café for dessert. There they got Swiss hot chocolate, which Molly (Hien) says was “delicious, and she has never tasted anything like it.” (Kathleen) Foley added that it was like drinking a melted chocolate bar and she can never eat chocolate again. Apparently, the hot chocolate was very thick and it was served with sugar that could be sprinkled on top. The girls also had chocolate tiramisu, a white chocolate dish, chocolate cake with a cream and raspberry filling. Needless to say we really need the game tonight to burn off the calories from lunch.

We also visited a church that has one of the most famous frescoes in Switzerland (by Benardino Luini, who was influenced by Leonardo Da Vinci). The painting used an entire wall to depict the Crucifixion of Jesus. The church was very pretty and very old and also had other paintings that were done by “local” artists. I put local in quotes because most of the painters are from Como, Italy - not Switzerland.

On the ride home, we visited a Silk factory in Como that also has an outlet store. A lot of people bought scarves, gloves, hats, and ties. Though we only had a half hour I pretty sure that most of us could have stayed a lot longer. This place was huge and had so many different things to look at. Everything was so nice and high quality that most of us just walked around touching things.

We had our second game tonight against Petra Varese, which we played in the giant stadium that usually houses the men’s team. This stadium was very nice and not really what we were expecting to play in. It was really nice to play in this gym, it was a really different atmosphere. We won this game, 55–51, and it was a tough game. I think we were much better acquainted with the international rules today, but there were still instances where the ref would say something and we would just smile and nod like we knew what was going on. The game was really friendly; we did the traditional exchange of gifts between the teams. We had brought t-shirts and pens for the other team and in return they gave us chocolate. We did this yesterday too for the team, but as one player said, “Sorry we don’t have anything for you.” After the game they also gave us some Coca-Cola and traditional Italian Christmas bread, which was really good!

Tomorrow should be a relaxing day, we get to explore Cantu in the morning, then we leave for Como in the afternoon.

Arrivederci per ora!

Bri

Photo Gallery

Photo Captions: The scenery is a view of Lake Como; the action shots and group photo are against Petra Varese; the final picture is of blogger Bri Flanders and teamate Stasia Twomey

December 29, 2009

Today the team had the chance to visit the wonderful city of Verona. It was about a 2 hour bus ride from Cantu, so even though we slept through the night, we all managed to get in a little more shut eye. For the parts that I was awake for, the drive was really quite nice. We drove through Milan, so we were able to see more of the industrial companies that exist in the area. Our guide, Elena, also mentioned that Milan is the industrial capital of Italy, since Rome and the south is more focused on tourism. Along the drive we saw some of the Alps, which serve as a natural border between Italy and Switzerland. In some of the pictures you can see where some of the mountains have been quarried for both white and pink marble, which is also a large part of their economy.

We passed many smaller villages that were able to survive throughout the years. Elena also added that most of this area was not affected by any bombing during World War II because of its proximity to the Swiss border.

While in Verona we were able to see the Roman arch that marks the beginning of the center of the city. Elena was able to tell us a lot of about the history of the area. Once in the center, we saw the outside (which we were told was all we really needed to see) of the second largest arena in Italy. The Arena is second only to the Coliseum in Rome and was used for gladiator fights and general public entertainment. In front of the Coliseum, the city had constructed a skating rink for Christmas and some of the people skating were actually quite good.

From the Arena, we walked further into the city to see the Balcony of Juliet. It was quite a tourist area but was quite fun. The area was lined with love notes from those who had visited the balcony, and apparently it is a tradition to touch the statue of Juliet’s breast for good luck in love and relationships. There was also a terrace where people could go on to get a different view of the balcony. Within the stairwell leading to the terrace, visitors could write their names on the walls, also another belief of good luck for relationships and love.

After visiting the balcony, we were able to spend some free time. Many people walked around the city, others shopped, and some ate. It was very nice to get some time just to explore the area that we were in. We then had to drive back to Cantu for our first game against the Italian BTF Cantu team.

As for the game against BTF Cantu (B1 league), let’s just say it is really different than playing at home. Not only is the paint a different shape, but we had to deal with a 24 second clock, 9 second backcourt, boxing out during free throws and many other things that we were still not sure about. One of the funniest things about today, was that since it was an exhibition game, assistant coach Meredith (Galena) got to play with us. We are pretty short at the point guard position currently, so Meredith stepped in to give Kara (Rogers) some time to rest. (Meredith played the point for three years at St. Anslem). We lost pretty badly (82-39), but were able to improve our performance in the second half. Hopefully tomorrow goes better.

Tomorrow we hope to go to Lugano in Switzerland, then head to Varese to play our second game.

Arrivederci per ora!!

Bri

Photo Gallery

Photo Captions: Mountain View is of the Alps from bus ride up to Verona; the balcony shot is the famous "Balcony of Juliet" (Verona is the primary scene where Shakespere's Romeo & Juliet took place); the large edifice with tourists in the background is the Verona Arena (third only in size to the Roman Colosseum); the other three shots are from today's exhibition game.

The final picture is of Assistant Coach Meredith Galena at the free throw line.

December 28, 2009

Ciao!! (Hello!!)

Today was a long day. The team began our day with practice at Worcester State before heading to catch our flight in Boston. Practice went well, but was only the first part of a long and tiring string of hours. We arrived at Logan International Airport around 4:30, only to find out that our flight to Amsterdam was already delayed. Though the flight was supposed to leave at 7:05 pm, we didn’t leave until 8:30 pm.

The flight was pretty calm, except for the fact that it lasted about 8 hours, there were multiple crying babies, and no one on the team really got any sleep.

We landed in Amsterdam around 9:00 am local time. Since our flight from Boston was delayed, we had to change connecting flights, and ended up staying in the airport for about 3 hours before the next flight to Milan was scheduled to leave. Most of the team and travel party got some food and a chance to stretch our legs, but after the first hour almost everyone on the team ended up falling asleep on their carry-on luggage in the terminal.

We arrived in Milan around 3:00, and luckily even with the changes to our flight schedule no one lost their luggage!! We met our guide, Elena outside of baggage claim and we boarded the bus, where we met our driver, Franco, to head towards Cantu, where our hotel is located.

At first the only differences I noted between here and home were the huge amounts of reconstruction and industrial work going on within Milan. As we drove towards Como, we could begin to see the mountains that surround the famous lake! We originally thought that we would have to wait to check into the hotel until after our scheduled practice, but we were able to get on the road quickly enough to settle into our rooms before heading off to the gym.

I will mention some things about our rooms – they are nothing like what we expected at all. The space is very small, so obviously with 2 girls in each room, there is barely enough room to walk. The beds are quite small – as Kathleen (Foley) describes them, “Remember when you were really young and finally got a ‘big girl bed’?” They are honestly only about 1 foot off the ground. Of course we will make do; it was just one piece of culture shock that we would experience.

Practice went well. We played in the gym where we will be having our first international game tomorrow. I don’t think any of the posts or I will get used to the trapezoidal paint. We have so many questions about the international rule, but hopefully the referees will give us a quick run through before the game tomorrow.

After practice we were able to experience our first bit of Italian cuisine. We walked down the street from our hotel to a local pizzeria, and it was fantastic! Most everyone got a personal pizza, which is slightly different from what you would expect in the US. It was a flat bread pizza, but everything was so fresh! Some of the travel party ordered pasta dishes and let us try a little. It’s so fresh and really does have a distinct taste that the boxed noodles from home really don’t have. Some of the team got dessert afterwards and again were highly impressed with the quality of food. We ordered gelato and some pastry type thing that we had no idea what the name was.

The language barrier is definitely going to be hard to overcome. Most of our meals were ordered by pointing at the menu or other dishes that surrounding families had ordered. Gina (Sicuso) can speak a little Italian, but that can only take us so far.

As for now, we intend to get a good night’s sleep tonight as at this point we have been up for around 36 hours straight.

Arrivederci per ora!! (Goodbye for now!!),

Bri

Photo Gallery

Photo Captions: Airplane view is Amsterdam; the mountains are shots of Lake Como; the other pics are of practice