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Day 2 – Let the Practice Begin!

Tuesday, July 3rd

The doors to our music school!

I woke up today at 8am to get ready for my 9:00 practice slot. Jet lag made me sleepy and it took all I had to actually get out of bed and get dressed. Dr. Michael Baron covers the cost of breakfast and I made my way down to a cafe called Nana where I got a chocolate croissant and extra water for the day ahead. You have to keep hydrated! The music school is located on a street nearby. There are stairs that can be taken to get there. The classrooms are in a courtyard arrangement in order to keep cool. I had practice room #7 and remained there for about an hour.

Pippa and the gang (Maxim, Vadim, Jason and his mom, Daniel and his mom, and Mohit) met me there and we started our walk. We first went to stop at the Porta Marzia, an Etruscan gate built into old city walls. Inside the gate is the Rocca Paolina, an old fortress built by Sangallo in the 1500s. The interior brought a much needed break from the sun. It was enormous inside. Everyone really enjoyed the gift shop. Many of us bought Perugia guide books, as well as educational guide books, and cards.

We had a delicious lunch! We took an escalator from the Rocca to the main plaza (Piazza I’V Novembre) where we found a nice and well priced Trattoria. We ordered appetizers of tomato/mozzarella salad and bruschetta. I had tortellini with a creamy pesto sauce. Ahhhh, Italia!

Master class for vocal/clarinet/string students was at around 2:00 and for pianists, 4:30. Maxim was first to volunteer and played “The Lark” by Glinka. Daniel and Jason played as well – Khachaturian and Debussy. Other students also played.

We all planned on going out to eat, but restaurants don’t really open until 8:00pm so we had to wait an hour. We all went to a restaurant down the street with an all Italian menu. It was very difficult to read!

Soon finally arrived at around 8:45 after a long day of traveling. He seemed very exhausted and he was in desperate need of a shower. It was nice that he finally made it. Now we can play a Schumann duet together!!!

Day 2 Fun Tidbits:

They don’t have doggy bags in Europe so I had to carry my tortellini to my fridge wrapped in tin!

We discovered a new instrument! A man was playing a hammered dulcimer-looking instrument in the street!

We were late to our conversational Italian class!

Maxim got his first 2€ coins today and was ecstatic!