Visiting the Stibbert

Today was a relaxing day, as I only had museology which ends in the early afternoon. Today we went to the Stibbert Museum, which is about a 10-15 minute bus ride from the historic center that we are in. Below is the outside of the museum.

The Stibbert Museum was probably my favorite museum so far. Stibbert collected many oriental items from world fairs, such as the one in Paris, and this museum featured many items in his collection. He had everything from samurai armor, to knight armor, to Chinese ceramics, to French weaponry, to beautiful murano glass mirrors and more. Below is a very small portion of the samurai collection... This wasn't even half of it!

The museum was situated on a hill, so when we were walking back to the bus stop I was able to take this picture. Can you spy the top of the Duomo? 

It was raining when we got back, which meant streets looked like this...

So I decided to shop at the usually very crowded leather market. I have been eying a purse since the first few days I got here, and today I finally purchased it. The color is more of a camel than a dark brown like in the picture, but the lighting is really bad in my apartment. In any case, I am very pleased with my purchase (and bargain-- my mom taught me well!)

From there, it was off to ceramics to do some more work on my lid. I've been really frustrated because the lid doesn't fit perfectly (I just had to choose a difficult shape to execute) but I'm now in the process of decorating the lid. It's a lot of work making the triangles, so I only do a little bit at a time. Thankfully, the sun is almost halfway done, but then I have to fill in the water below (and maybe the rays like in my original sketch).

For dinner, I decided to make a fajita type meal with grilled chicken breast, arugula, sautéed onions, avocado, egg, and yogurt dressing. The avocado wasn't very good, but other than that my meal was delicious (and healthy... AND a nice break from Italian food).

After dinner, I carved a design into the second elephant soap carving. I also bought some more soap so I can carve even more. Luckily, Conad had white soap today so my carvings won't look like blocks of cheddar cheese!

It's been a long (but productive) day so...

Ciao for now!