A Day at the Alhambra

Today turned out awesome, but it didn´t start super well. I booked tickets in advance for the Alhambra through our hotel and received a confirmation months ago, but when I saw a charge on my credit card for a sporting goods company in Barcelona, I thought my card had been hacked, so I disputed the charge; once I figured out it was OK, though, I called the company to have the charge reinstated, and it was. I thought all was well. Yesterday the concierge tells me he´ll give me a voucher to pick up the tickets and that our entry time for the Palacio Nazaries is 12:30. This morning I was using the computer in the lobby at 11:20 while Sean was showering and he came up, handed me the voucher, and mentioned that I would need to go immediately, since the tickets needed to be picked up an hour before the entry time. So I freaked out, fly upstairs and tell Sean to meet me there by 12:30, and then run outside to look for the bus, which I didn´t see, so I hopped in a cab.

At the ticket office I give the guy my passport and the voucher like the concierge said. First he couldn´t find the reservation, then he tells me it was cancelled. If I had had the card on me --it was at the hotel--he probably could have seen that the charge was put on there again, but there was no explaining that to this guy. Fine: I paid 24 euro for new tickets. Then I look and see that the entry time is for 12pm, and there´s no way Sean will be there in time. I ask if I can have a later time, and he says flatly "no." I asked another woman if I could change to an afternoon ticket, and she, also, said no way. Great. So I spent a little while freaking out over the fact that either we go in the Generalife gardens and skip the Palacio Nazaries (which is the main Arab building that you think of when you think Alhambra), or I pay for the tickets a THIRD TIME. Sean gets there ten minutes early, which is pretty impressive, but still too late for us to use the second set of tickets, so we just decided, screw it, they get 70 euros from us, fine! Shit happens, and if that´s the worst thing that goes wrong, well, that´s awesome, right?

Still, a little part of me was grumbling that this had better be pretty freaking amazing to make up for me paying for six tickets, and happily, I can say that it really, truly, was worth it. The architecture was just so different than what I´m used to--the delicate scrollwork, the elaborate muqarnas (stalactite) vaults, the friezes of Kufic script, the multi-colored tilework on the lower parts of the walls, the marquetry ceilings, the serene courtyards with fountain after fountain...it was exquisite. The views over the city of Granada and the Sierra Nevada were spectacular, and there were gorgeous gardens within the Palacio Nazaries itself and also the Generalife, though that was more rigorously laid out, which I´m not over-fond of. I should also mention the Alcazaba Fortress, which was probably the highest outlook point over the city. The only let-down was the famous court of the Lions, which is supposed to have a fountain supported by twelve lions in the center, but they were all out for restoration! Booooo.

You could certainly tell that it´s Spain´s most visited monument when you saw the bathroom complex, a full two stories of bathrooms: caballeros downstairs and damas upstairs! There were plenty of cats roaming about, including a black one that had cleverly flopped down in the air-conditioned gift shop. The Alhambra also sported the first real water fountains that we´ve seen in the entire country, which really excited Sean, who is part camel. Anyway, the point is, I don´t care how much I had to pay to get in, it was definitely worth it. It´s not my absolute favorite monument like it is for Phyllis, but it was memorable!

Granada, Day One

This morning I rode the Porsche of coach buses. Leather seats, drinks and snacks service, and not one, but two crappy movies (in Spanish): National Treasure, and some movie involving Vegas and Ashton Kutcher. Throw in a few channels of radio with complimentary headphones and a Spanish newspaper that I only bothered to read one article in (about the coup in Honduras), and it was like being on an airplane without the annoyance of going through security! Four hours went by really quickly, and then we were in Granada, which is very warm, but absolutely gorgeous. It´s more quaint and medieval-looking than Madrid. Actually, in the bus station, the bathroom signs were in Spanish, English, and Arabic, which was very interesting.

Our hotel is awesome--it´s a three star that happened to be offering a nice deal if you stayed two nights in June. I am in fact using the computer in their lobby for free right now, which is convenient, even if their old computer means I can only upload five pictures at a time from my camera. We had lunch at a place I found while we were looking for the place Sean wanted to eat at from the guidebook, but it turned out to be so delicious--I had gazpacho and Spanish lasagna, and Sean had stewed ox-tail with potatoes, which resembles a pot roast that has died (figuratively) and gone to heaven. Then we wandered around the streets, and I forced Sean into a few churches, including the beautiful Gothic-Romanesque cathedral, and we meandered through the Albayzin, the old Muslim quarter with great views of the Alhambra, which is where we go tomorrow.

So apparently we both look more Spanish than we ever look Italian, because rarely did anyone mistake me in Italy (and never Sean) but here everyone and their mother thinks we´re Spaniards. While it´s nice not to be automatically given the English menu, it´s sad to then have to use my ridiculous Spanish! I cannot master this lisping business. "Grathias?" I can´t do it!

Also, I am in love with taxis. We´ve taken them everywhere, because this is my honeymoon and I am not hauling bags onto a city bus. I´m on vacation! Plus, it feels so deluxe to be zipping around a city, and it´s like an amusement park ride with the way these guys drive. Lol.

Leaving Rome and the Great Honeymoon Adventure

First of all, I´m in Madrid with Sean! Whoot!

Leaving Rome was not totally the low-key travel experience I expected it to be. We had to check out by 11am, so I´d just finished drying my hair a little after ten when I go into the kitchen and see Bailey absolutely freaking out and crying in her and Alice´s bedroom. As it turns out, she´d managed to misread her ticket (multiple times) and her supposed 6pm flight from Rome actually left at 11:15, meaning she was totally, irrevocably screwed. Now, I didn´t post anything about any of my roommates while I was in Rome, for fear they would somehow read it, since we all used the same computer, but let´s just say that while Bailey is a year older than me, in maturity level she is several years younger. This was her first trip abroad and her first time traveling alone anywhere, and you could just really, really tell. She´s a nice girl, but really scatterbrained and inattentive. So it was not completely surprising to me that she could manage to look at a ticket and repeatedly think that her Philly to Ohio flight was actually her Rome to Philly flight.

Alice and I immediately went into crisis-management mode, Caitlin having skipped town earlier in the morning to go to Venice. Bailey called her mom at 4am in the morning to tell her the bad news, and we scrambled to get our things together so we could leave immediately, get her to the airport and see if she could get on a later flight. Bailey was a complete mess, in the meantime. She thought that having travel insurance might help her avoid paying for another ticket, and neither of us had the heart to tell her that missing your flight does not count as as injury or accident...anyway, we took a cab to Termini, where her mom called back to say that all of United´s flights were in the morning, so she might wind up spending the night in Rome, which we tried to assure her could be an awesome thing, because, hello, Rome! Totally glossing over that part where she might need a hotel room and a new plane tickets. Meep. We put her on the Leo da Vinci Express to Fiumicino; I did feel really bad for her, and I would have liked to go with her, but I had to get a shuttle out to Ciampino airport, so we told her that if she could get through this bad travel experience she could handle anything, and waved goodbye. Then Alice and I parted ways, but since we´re in the same program it was less sad than ¨well, see you in September!¨

The shuttle ride out to Ciampino was really quite nice--a whole coach bus with three people on it, and it went out on the Via Appia Nuova, which runs semi parallel to Appia Antica. In fact, once we were outside the city proper I was really wishing the bus ride could last longer, knowing these were my last glimpses of Italian countryside, which I do find extraordinarily captivating. Too soon, however, we were at the airport, a tiny little affair serviced basically just by EasyJet and RyanAir. I arrived four hours before my flight, and I had forgotten exactly how tiny this was--there was one tiny bookstore with nothing in English, and I had been hoping to pick up something to tide me over, having donated Jane Eyre to the Temple campus library. Intead, I marinated outside in the sun for more than an hour, surrounded by what seemed like half the Italian military, who were all catching some flight somewhere. It was a little disconcerting to have so many men with guns standing around you, all smoking furiously and chattering on their cell phones, but as we noted again and again this month, Italian men in uniform are just plain hot. Alice chided me for looking, actually, and said that she and her husband totally don´t scope out other people; I said that´s fine, but Sean and I do, and we´re totally honest about it!

Finally, I check in, and after some further wait we board the plane, where I managed to get an aisle seat, since RyanAir is first come, first serve. The woman next to me was apparently afraid of flying, because she was gripping the armrests the entire way, I swear. As we descended into Spain, I had to marvel at how different the country seemed, much more brown, more mountains. We land on time and I head into the terminal to pick up my bags, but they´re not there; finally, I ask someone, and they tell me I need to go to a different terminal. Ok. I walk two terminals over, only to discover that I´m now outside the security area and my bags are inside, through those doors with all the expectant greeters gathered around and a big ¨No Entrance¨sign. Well, crap! I was really quite stumped, so I went off in search of the Ryanair window, practicing how I might say ¨give me my bag, goddamit,¨when I ran into a couple of Italians who had been on my flight. They also had been told to go to that terminal, and when they realized the situation, one of the guys took off his coat, handed his carryon to his friend, and told me that we were going to try to just walk in and see if the police stopped us. Oh, yay, exactly what I want in my first fifteen minutes in a foreign country, to piss off their version of the TSA. Imagine my surprise, then, when we stroll through the doors and a cop just casually asks to see our plane tickets, then waves us toward the right carrel! Does that happen a lot, that they drop passengers at one end of the airport and expect them to magically retrieve their bags from the other end by breaking the security barrier? If so, that earns Spain a black mark in my book.

By this time it was nine o´clock. I got in a taxi, and it was a slightly steep 30 euro to get to Pension Corbero, where Sean was watching for me from the balcony. :-) Reunion! The hotel is really adorable, the windows are soundproof and the air conditioning is good, so if it just had a mini fridge and a more comfortable bed I think it would be heaven. We went shopping last night for breakfast food, because they´re not big on breakfast here, so we have bread, jam, and apricots. Yum!

We didn´t wind up going out to dinner until 11pm the first night, which is exactly when the other madrilenos do it. The food and wine are amazing, but they smoke in restaurants, which is unpleasant. Yesterday we got up late, walked around the city, saw the Plaza Mayor and the Royal Palace, argued about where to eat lunch (Sean wouldn´t eat in any neighborhood he thought looked "dirty," but compared to Rome, you could eat off of Madrid´s streets!) and wandered through the Buen Retiro. Today we woke up earlier to hit El Rastro, billed as the world´s biggest flea market, except it´s just not; it´s a market, not a flea market. Big difference! I don´t want to buy jewelry, flags, kitchen equipment, or socks; I wanted treasure troves of old stuff, and I did not find it. Bust. From there we went to the Prado, where we spent about three hours, Sean´s maximum capacity. I believe "wowza" is an approximate description!

Tomorrow we head to Granada, so my next post should be from there...

Italian Hours

My departure from Rome is fairly imminent now; just one more full day, and then a dreaded Travel Day, separate me from my honeymoon. It's rather strange not to be headed straight home; for one thing, I actually have to do laundry tomorrow so that I can have all clean clothes for Spain, and if I've figured it out correctly I should only have to do some minor underwear and sock washing (for which purposes I have a plastic baggie of powdered laundry soap, which looks a lot like coke). That's also if I don't spill something on myself, like the pesto-laden green shirt that I'm going to try and re-wash yet again tomorrow, or the (silk) skirt that received a bath in Caitlin's spilled beer.

Tonight was our last meal at home, because tomorrow we're having lunch at an osteria near the apartment and then a fancy farewell banquet. Two of my roommates are 'foodies,' and as such have insisted on cooking elaborate and delicious meals this past month--ratatouille, an entire roast chicken, various Spanish dishes Caitlin learned from her home-stay family, etc--but honestly, give me a pot of pasta, with a huge dish of fresh grated parmesan and a container of ricotta, some wine and bread, and you will have a happy camper. They were kind of horrified when I explained that we ate very similar meals for four months on end in Florence! But tonight we did a simple dinner, fortified by the about ten pounds' worth of salad left over from last night's pizza and make-your-own-salad party, and it was really excellent.

Part of me is certainly ready to leave Rome, but I really failed to anticipate how much I would enjoy living here. I expected it to pale in comparison to the Florence, but it was the reverse. Rome is, as my roommates point out, incredibly noisy, dirty, and covered in graffiti, but it's also one of the most beautiful cities I've ever seen. It's alive. Everywhere you look, Rome is bursting at the seams with trees and plants and greenery; even its weeds are dainty little red-headed blossoms. Florence had precious little of that, mostly confined to parks and cloisters, not emerging riotously over walls and down the embankments of the train stations. Of course, Florence's small size also precluded the kind of rambling districts that Rome can offer.

I think what a lot of what I retained from previous experiences of Rome was a sense of the deathlike stillness of the ancient ruins, the sterility of an endless series of marble facades, in comparison to Florence's milder palette and unpretentious medieval streets. Now, I think of the glory and warmth of that same marble against the blue, blue Roman sky. I think of walls overflowing with those purple flowering plants; I think of climbing hills and seeing unexpected, sweeping vistas of the cityscape; I even think of the ubiquitous water fountains, gushing some of the sweetest water I've ever tasted. Now it's Florence that makes me think of stillness; nothing in Rome, it seems, stands still for very long.

There were things I missed about Florence, though, I have to admit. There's something nice about being able to cross a city in half an hour, and something even nicer about living a block from the Accademia, and stopping in the see the David before going to the grocery store. The sprawling size of Rome meant that I had less of a chance to develop any real familiarity with particular areas beyond our neighborhood and the area near the school. Then there was the shocking lack of Milka in this entire freakin' city besides the Conad in Termini, and of course, the profusion of Vespas, which are ridiculously loud--there should be a noise ordinance against them, or something. Despite all this, Rome wins out in my mind, on the basis of a combination of grandeur and sheer vitality. If I may draw this sketch to a close, I will simply say that I find this city truly deserving of the epithet "Eternal."

Catacombs

I made another stab at the catacombs today, this time with Bailey in tow. The bus came, this time, but there was another minor snag: namely, when we looked out and saw that we were at the stop before Via Appia (San Sebastiano), we knew we had to get at the next stop. Wrong! As we discovered, there are no fewer than three stops all called Via Appia, all spread out over this very long, narrow, and congested road with about a two-foot clearance on either side between the wall and the cars speeding past. We wound up having to walk about a mile to the Catacombs of St. Callixtus, only to find it closed, so we kept going to the Catacombs of St. Sebastian a little ways further.

As usual, when ever anything is cool in this country, you can't take a picture of it, but the catacombs were very interesting, especially in terms of early Christian graffiti--the fish, the chi-rho, and anchors, which are a symbol I haven't really seen before. However, you can only go down with a guide, the guide takes you on a rather brief trot through what amounts to 6 miles of passageways, and then, voila! You're in the church above. I must say that although the tombs in Cerverteri were all separate instead of being connected underground, it was way more fun to wander on your own than to be crammed in with 20 other people like we were here.

In other news, Sean flies out tonight! We will soon be reunited in Spain--that is, if I can successfully navigate my way to the airport through the transit strike planned for Friday. Ughh. I do not want to have to pay 45 euro for a shuttle!

The Farewell Tour Begins

Yesterday afternoon I went down to Sta. Sabina, which is south of the Circus Maximus, and wound up walking all the way back up to Piazza del Popolo. It was a loooong way, but the weather's been so cool here that it's a shame not to take advantage. Sta. Sabina is a perfect example of an early Christian basilica, and a pair of 5th century wooden doors contain the earliest known depiction of the crucifixion, so that was interesting. Also in that area was a municipal rose garden as well as Parco Savello, which has an amazing overlook over the city. And we cannot forget the Priorate of the Knights of Malta, their flag flying from the top of the Aventine hill.

After that I headed back past the Forum Boarium (goodbye to the Temples of Hercules Victor and Portunus, sniff!) and dropped in at the Basilica of S. Marco across from the Vittoriano, which, damn it, I LIKE. S. Marco was basically a tarted-up version of Sta. Sabina with some nice 9th century mosaics in the apse, but nothing mind-blowing. Then I re-visited the Gesu and Sant'Ignazio for their incredible trompe l'oeil ceiling paintings, and realized that I love the Gesu's way more than Sant'Ignazio's. I bought a 3-foot long calendar that has a huge picture of the entire ceiling! Very exciting. Further stops included San Luigi dei Francesci for another look at Caravaggio's Matthew cycle, and then the Pantheon, which was...the Pantheon. Can words describe?

We had the art kids over for dinner last night and it was a lot of fun. We went to the Vatican to get gelato, and I swear that place I used to like must be gone, because it's always closed. Then we took, or attempted to take, a group photo in front of St. Peter's, and then finally we got chased out by the Vatican guards at 11 when they closed the piazza. I wish it had been the Swiss guards doing the ejecting, but what can you do?

Today I will attempt--again--to visit the catacombs. If there is more thwarting, I don't know what I'll do.

The Wonders of Enzo Cucchi

Yesterday was Father's Day, which I totally forgot until Alice asked me if I especially missed my dad...oops. Anyway, today was a gorgeous day temperature-wise, yesterday's rain having dropped the temperature into the 70s. It would have been a great day to go exploring, but we had to meet up at Piazza del Popolo at 3 to head out to the workspace of Enzo Cucchi, an Italian avant garde artist. So we take the metro to Termini, switch to my enemy, the B line, and take it alllll the way out to its northern extremity, Rebibia. Then we wander around a bit as Brunella figures out which bus we should be getting on; we get on the right one and ride about 15 minutes past some Roman suburbs and get out in front of a furniture factory. Ok. Then a car pulls up, which is apparently our ride, except there are 13 of us! Luckily this was followed by another car and an SUV, which I hopped in, and therein enjoyed a hair-rising ten minute drive down a road so narrow that we had to pull over into the ditch to let larger trucks pass, and zipped around a sharp turn only to screech on the brakes to avoiding colliding head-on with a semi. It was rather exhilarating.

Finally, we arrived at what looked like an airplane hangar, but was actually a set design factory; they were working on a set for Enzo's next installation at the Capodimonte museum in Naples, as well as a production of Midsummer Night's Dream at the Baths of Caracalla, and a production of Tosca at the Met. Part of the sets for Gangs of New York were also built there. Well! We saw a lot of wondrous things totally unconnected to the artist we'd come to meet, like these huge twenty-foot long snarling panthers that were apparently built for a haute couture fashion show, and a metal-working shop where the sweaty Italian craftsmen looked as though they did not appreciate being treated like animals gawked at in a zoo.

Enzo Cucchi uses some of the space upstairs as a staging area for his projects, which range from tiny paintings to the huge tri-partite installation for Naples, three gigantic, black circular chambers with staircases inside and out that you have to climb to see the pieces, which were, in a word, weird. That doesn't even go anywhere toward describing the man himself, though--imagine every idea you have associated with "European artist" and he would probably satisfy them all. Slicked back, longish hair, a white suit with a black turtleneck, incredibly distracted, running too and fro, speaking incredibly quickly with much hand-gesturing and lecturing sternly (in Italian) about what art 'is.' Note: artists do not think, they do; if you're thinking, you're not doing it right. Ok, sure. He was just really hilarious to watch! We all noticed that he and Brunella seemed to have some kind of connection; he kept touching her shoulder, and at one point when he kept barking at people she remarked that he was being extra nasty today, which she then translated as "antipatico" for his benefit, and he scoffed. Turns out they were married, for 13 years, and have a kid together! She so did not mention that beforehand.

Anyway, it took an hour to get out to this place and an hour to get back, but we only spent an hour there total. It was certainly an adventure, but we were all kind of like, what did we exactly gain from that besides an amusing show? I could have been in a church, dammit! Lol.

A Brief Florence Redux

I just returned from my sojourn in Florence with Carla--brief though it was, I had such a good time. She lives outside the city center right now, so we just took the bus into town to have dinner at a bar called Kitsch, which is a little ways past the synagogue and not that far from where we used to live. The Italian tradition of the aperitivo dinner is well-beloved in Florence: you pay 7 or 8 euro for a cocktail and then it's an all-you-can eat buffet. While we lived there we went a few times to Colle Bereto, (which charged a ridiculous 9 euro) but its buffet was definitely more upscale, sophisticated fare; besides that one time with the awesome lasagna, it was never that great, but Kitsch had an amazing spread of food. I couldn't even have identified half the stuff I was eating, but I liked all of it, except for some seafood gnocchi (blech) and the couscous, which was regrettably really dry. Of course, liking everything led to me and Carla both getting two heaping plates of food and then wandering around the city groaning because our stomachs hurt--so badly, in fact, that we stopped at a pharmacy and contemplated paying 9 euro for the Italian version of Tums, but we decided that it was a just punishment to suffer for eating too much. Anyway, our night consisted of wandering around the city, which was pretty much deserted for a Saturday, and then returning to her apartment and watching French Kiss, which is the movie I associate with my Florence experience, par excellence, and I had forgotten how much of the dialogue I had memorized (from our many, many viewings of that film) until both of us started yelling out the lines.

Beyond walking around, I didn't actually do anything in Florence, which I don't regret, because I was literally just there, and like I realized two weeks ago, I've kind of done everything I wanted to there for now. Besides, it was more important to just spend time with Carla, as she's been going through some rocky times recently job-wise, and Justin's off in Malta doing Maltese things. Luckily, she's planning to come home next July for a family reunion on the Cape, so I know when I will see her next, but I was glad that I happened to be in the same country at the same time that she needed some company!

In conclusion: "Beautiful! Gorgeous! Wish you were here!"

Ughhhh

It finally cools down in Rome, and I'm headed out of it! I love the Roman sky, but the Roman sun is pretty killer, so when I woke up and saw clouds I admit was excited.

Oh, but when did I wake up this morning? Not once, twice, but three times: 6:30, 7, and 8am, and it wasn't by the gentle buzzing of the alarm clock or Caitlin poking me, either--rather, it was by the ear-splitting whine of the BUZZ SAW being used on the terrace of the apartment across the street from us. Who the #$^ needs a buzzsaw at 6:30 on a Saturday?? I know not, but add to this that I went to bed at 2:45 and you have a very displeased person.

We went out for dinner with the art kids last night, and when our first choice restaurant couldn't seat nine people, we wound up on Piazza Navona eating at a place that literally stares at Bernini's Four Rivers Fountain and Borromini's Sant'Agnese behind it. And boy, do you pay for that privilege--despite the fact that we ordered no appetizers and didn't even wind up getting the bread that we had to ask for repeatedly, the bill was 30 euro per person, thanks to four bottles of 25-euro-apiece HOUSE WINE. The point of house wine, as you may know, it that it is REALLY FREAKING CHEAP, except, apparently, for the twilight zone of Piazza Navona. Anyway, despite the bill and the awful service, the food was really good, far better than anyone had expected from a tourist trap. Lesson learned all the same.

It was 11 by that point, and Alice decided it was past her bedtime and went home. The rest of us wandered in search of a fabled karaoke bar that the art kids had heard of, but after some aimless meandering and a call to one of Jess' friends in Canada who Googled it for us, we found out it was only a karaoke bar on weeknights. Then we decided to head to Trastevere, in the course of which I finally rode a tram (I was excited) and then did more wandering in search of, apparently, The Perfect Bar. Which doesn't exist, so when we exited into Piazza Sta. Maria in Trastevere, which was packed with people our age sitting on the huge fountain under the watchful eye of some Carabinieri, we ended up buying bottles of beer and a bottle of 8 euro wine from a pizza shop, which helpfully opens the wine bottle and gives you plastic cups. Sometimes (most of the time) I love Europe. They really don't care if you get drunk in public as long as you don't start singing the Italian anthem really loudly, as our compatriots on the other side of the fountain did; the cops' response was to amble over, stare at them fixedly till the singing died away, and then return to lounging in a corner of the piazza. The system works.

Even though at one point I had to venture to a cafe and shadily buy a package of Babol gum so I could use their bathroom, and although at another point Caitlin knocked over her beer on the step I was sitting on, thoroughly dousing my butt, it was a really fun time. I discovered that one of the art kids, Sally, has really similar taste in old movies as I do, and she is not the kind of person I would expect to be enjoying Arsenic and Old Lace, let me tell you. Finally, however, around 1:45 we thought we should head home--forgetting, of course, exactly how far that part of Trastevere is from where we live. That was about a 45 minute walk, made more pleasant by alcohol, but still pretty grueling toward the end when it's uphill. Oh, and Caitlin had not used a cafe bathroom and was about to die on our way home, so she hopped nimbly over a fence into a shady tree/garden/thing next to the Vatican walls to take care of business, while Bailey and I leaned against the fence and tried to look like we belonged there.

All told, a good evening, except for waking up only a couple of hours after going to sleep, and knowing I have a train to catch, and trying to convince myself to wash my hair here instead of at Carla's. I couldn't manage that part, so I'm hauling my hairdryer to Florence! Ah, well.

Partially Thwarted

Yesterday was a day of total thwarting. A pesto-laden sandwich exploded on my shirt right after lunch, forcing me to awkwardly hold my purse in front of myself for the rest of the afternoon. I was stared at and followed by a creepy man in the subway, who followed me through the train and seemed to be sniffing my shoulder all the way to Termini; I then went all the way to S. Paolo Fuori le Mure on the nasty B subway only to discover that I was wearing a tank top and had forgotten my sweater at school, ergo, I couldn't go in. I backtracked to the Piramide stop, intending to locate the Protestant cemetery, which was beyond where my map covers. After looking for it for half an hour, I gave up in defeat (spoiler: as I discovered today, it's behind huge walls and the entrance was a block away from where the guidebook claimed). Finally, worn out and dripping with sweat, I hit the Baths of Diocletian hoping there would be good air con in the museum, but there wasn't. Thwarted again!

Today went mostly quite well. We had a tour of Casino Ludovisi this morning, off the spectacular Via Veneto, where apparently Hollywood stars used to congregate in the heydey of Italian/American cinema. The Ludovisi family once owned huge tracts of the area, palaces, statuary collections, etc, but lost almost everything in speculation and are very snooty about what they do have left--namely, this 'casino' which is still bigger than most American mansions. There is still a prince Ludovisi, apparently. Anyway, the house is important because it contains Caravaggio's only mural work, an alchemically-themed composition that involves Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto all seen from below, with genitals flapping in the breeze.

Following this excursion, we all split up; the art kids headed for the beach, two of my roommates went shopping, and I went...to church. Naturally! No, I headed back to San Paolo, determined to right yesterday's wrong. I think I can say, apart from the amazing innovativeness of Sant'Ivo, San Paolo wins my vote for best church in Rome. It's huge, first of all, but built on a very comprehensible basilica plan, which I love. In front of the facade of the church is a huge palm-tree-bedecked garden enclosed by a colonnade, which was just really attractive. I discovered that this past year has been the Pauline Year, opened by Benedict on June 28, 2009, so it's closing next week. Part of this celebration of the two-thousandth anniversary of Paul's birth is a new set of wooden doors, the so-called Pauline doors, depicting scenes from the saint's life, as well as a 'Pauline flame' placed in front of a statue of the saint, to which you can contribute a candle for 1 euro (I bought the candle, but I'm taking it home!).

As I approached the doors I caught the unmistakable scent of incense, which is unusual for a Catholic church except for special occasions. Then I heard the Hosanna in the Highest hymn in English, which was also surprising. As it turns out, it was an English mass, but one in which eight new priests were being ordained, hence all the incense. I haven't heard a mass in quite a long time, but it makes nice background music to exploring a basilica. I sat and watched for a little at the end--I may not be Catholic, but you must admit that no one does pomp and circumstance like they do! There must have been thirty priests up there, and at least one bishop.

After this pleasant experience, I went to Piramide again to see about this Protestant cemetery business. This time I found the entrance, and am I ever glad I did, because this had to be the most beautiful cemetery I've ever seen! Shelley apparently wrote of it that it could make one in love with death, and indeed a friend brought his heart to Rome to be buried here (the rest of him is in Florence, I think). Keats is also present, with his "one whose name was writ in water" tombstone, but there were so many others that I found incredibly moving, mostly in terms of the testimonials that these monuments provide to the level of grief and mourning of those left behind. A statue of Psyche shedding her mortality, which was erected by a husband for his wife, bore the inscription "Her loss was as that of the keystone of an arch." There were many graves of young children from the 19th century, which was sad, especially when there were multiple children of one family that had died. There were also several tombs of spouses bearing inscriptions of "Together at last," where one had died many years before the other; they remind me of my parents. The side of another tomb carried one of my favorite sayings, which I learned from Anne of Green Gables: "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning."

So that was awesome, but after that came some thwarting. In front of the Piramide stop is where you can catch bus 118 to get to Via Appia Antica and the catacombs. The bus was supposed to come at :06, :24, and :58. I got there at 2:00 and waited until 2:45. No bus 118, though I had to watch bus 6o fly through about a hundred times. Finally I said screw it, and came home to do laundry, post photos, blog, and apologize to Carla for the communications mix-up that left her standing at the train station in Florence today thinking I was coming in! Whoops. No, tomorrow I'm off to Firenze again, albeit unexpectedly; Carla had some recent setbacks, so I thought I should pop up there while I'm, you know, in the same freakin' country!

Wednesday, Briefly

We had to reconvene at school at 5pm today for a lecture, so I spent the intervening 4.5 hours in the Borghese Gardens, having planned ahead this time by bringing with me a sandwich and a book. The book was P.G. Wodehouse's "Life with Jeeves," which I found quite funny; it's kind of Garrison Keillor-ish in tone, except it deals with the ridiculous antics and scrapes of an idiotic English society gent in the 1920s and his clever butler instead of mid-twentieth-century Norwegian bachelor farmers and other Lake Woebegonian residents.

But I digress, and this needs to be short, since it's after 11 and I'm already the last one up in the apartment! Aside from reading, I paid a visit to the Etruscan museum in the Renaissance-era Villa Giulia on the grounds of the garden. They said Borghese Gardens, but if you look at a map, I swear the gardens cover a sixth of the size of the city on that side of the river. I wandered for quite a while looking for the museum, and managed to find two other museums, as well as various national institutes, such as the Danish Institute of Rome, the Romanian Institute, etc., etc. Anyway, the museum was perfect for a rather quick stroll-through (I'm really not that into bronze grave goods and painted vases, I have to admit) but there were some fabulous things. The Sarcophagus of the Spouses is here, not at Cerveteri like I thought, and I love it for the happy and relaxed expressions of this pair, who demonstrate such an optimistic viewpoint. Death: the eternal banquet!

Meanwhile, I was totally surprised to find the Euphronios Vase, formerly of the Met in NY but finally repatriated to Italy a few years ago. I knew it left, but I didn't know exactly where it went, and there it was, the Death of Sarpedon in all its glory, just as when Eliasoph blathered on about it at length on my first trip to the Met as an art history student, which would be first semester freshman year! That seems forever and a day ago. Anyway, now I've seen this work of art on two continents, go me!

There were a lot of wonderful objects demonstrating the trade connections the Etruscans had with other Mediterranean cultures, particularly Greece, Egypt, and Persia, but unfortunately, there was a no photo policy, and I was only able to get a few photos when the gimlet eyes of the guards were elsewhere. It didn't help that I was literally the only person in this off-the-beaten-path museum on a Wednesday afternoon, either.

And now, to bed!

American Sonnet

We do not speak like Petrarch or wear a hat like Spenser
and it is not fourteen lineslike furrows in a small, carefully plowed field
but the picture postcard, a poem on vacation,
that forces us to sing our songs in little rooms
or pour our sentiments into measuring cups.
We write on the back of a waterfall or lake,
adding to the view a caption as conventional
as an Elizabethan woman’s heliocentric eyes.
We locate an adjective for the weather.
We announce that we are having a wonderful time.
We express the wish that you were here
and hide the wish that we were where you are,
walking back from the mailbox,
your head lowered as you read and turn the thin message in your hands.
A slice of this place, a length of white beach,
a piazza or carved spires of a cathedral
will pierce the familiar place where you remain,
and you will toss on the table this reversible display:
a few square inches of where we have strayed
and a compression of what we feel.

~Billy Collins

Bernini, Borromini and Co.

Today we were instructed to give ourselves a "self-guided tour" of Bernini's St. Theresa in Ecstasy in Sta. Maria della Vittoria, which just meant show up and take a poke around. It opened at 4, so a few hours beforehand I went to Palazzo Massimo alle Terme down the street, which had a fabulous collection of Roman sculpture, including a couple of Hellenstic Greek sculptures which were brought to Rome, the so-called "Prince" and the "Seated Boxer," as well as a beautiful copy of Myron's Diskobolos.

I went over to the church at 4, expecting strange and wondrous things, because this is one of the churches that I've always meant to see and always managed to miss in my previous trips to Rome. I was kind of disappointed in what I saw; the church itself was quite small, and thus the Baroque decoration felt really overwhelming (I'm sure all the other tourists didn't help). The St. Theresa itself was awesome, but what the art history books don't show you is that standing beneath it, the saint's face is actually not visible to you; you have to go across the church and stand on the step of the other transept chapel to be able to see her face. The light is also pretty terrible, aside from the cunningly concealed window that lights up the gilded rods behind the sculptural group, and it was difficult to see the 'spectators' sculpted on either side of chapel walls. I suppose I had placed this one work on too high a pedestal for it to achieve in person, despite all Bernini's genius. However, I must note that this piece furnished me with my very first German vocabulary word in my freshman year of college: Gesamtkunstwerk, or total art work, because it combines painting, architecture, and sculpture. Whoot!

Afterward I drifted down the street to San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, which is one of Borromini's masterpieces of Baroque architecture. Working with a very limited space, he designed a little oval-shaped church, with a dome that utilizes cross-shaped and octagonal-shaped coffers that recede in size as they approach the lantern; the dome itself is relatively shallow, but this tricks the eye into thinking it's much higher. What I love about Borromini's architecture, besides the plasticity of his forms, is that he preferred the interiors to be white, white, white. It's an antidote to the churches that look like a goldsmith vomited inside them (Sta. Maria della Vittoria!). Further down the same street is another Bernini, this time an entire church, San Andrea al Quirinale. Borromini and Bernini were contemporaries and rivals, so the juxaposition of two of their churches makes for interesting viewing. This was also an oval church, but more ornate, with gilded ribbing covering the dome and that dreadful 'hamburger' marble that was very popular at the time. I'll give Borromini the prize for the interior walls and dome, but the altarpiece in Bernini's church wins him points: the painting of St. Andrew's crucifixion is surrounded by sculpted angels who seem to be lifting the very frame into the heavens, lit from aboe by another concealed window; above the apse, the pediment of the altar frame breaks to allow a scuplture of Andrew to ascend toward the dome and the dove painted at the very apex of the lantern. Nice!

Cosi-Cosi

Today was such a mix of things being awesome and things not quite working out. My itinerary for the afternoon included one museum, two churches, and an archaeological site, which is what I consider a good day's work. Unfortunately, the Doria Pamphilij gallery to which I went first was kind of a waste of my 9 euro. Unless you sprang another 4 euro for the audioguide, you basically knew nothing about any of the works, as labelling was almost non-existent except for a few of the most major works. The museum does have a lot of works, including an underappreciated Raphael double portrait, an early Titian, and a couple of Caravaggios (his St. John the Baptist was beautiful) but the walls are hung the way they've always been, absolutely choked with frames, and the lighting was so awful you couldn't see the ones up higher. The one bright spot was Velazquez' portrait of Innocent X, which was apparently one of the most admired portraits in the seventeenth century and which the pope, upon seeing it, exclaimed "It's too true!"

After this I headed to Il Gesu, where Baciccio's illusionistic ceiling totally blew me away--it really looked like there were people falling from the ceiling! He even shaded the gilded ceiling around the figures to look like shadows. So incredible. From there I got some gelato over on Via Arenula by the cat sanctuary, which has some of the best I've had in the city, and then walked to the Theater of Marcellus and the adjoining church of San Nicolo in Carcere.

In this church, I waited with another couple for the guide to take us down into the excavations underneath, which revealed the remains of three Roman temples which were incorporated into the church's structure. He turned out to be a very handsome Italian lad! The other couple spoke Spanish and I told him I spoke English, so he started off doing the tour in both languages, though he claimed his Spanish was not very good. He kept looking at me as though I could be translating parts he had difficulty with in Spanish, because, it turned out, he thought I was their daughter! In the end I asked him to just do the tour in Spanish, because his slow, steady pronunciation of Spanish was exactly perfect for my comprehension, even if the Spaniards probably thought it was awful. The guidebook warned that anyone checking out the excavation shouldn't be afraid of close spaces, but it turned out to be laughably expansive compared to those tombs in Cerveteri. It was so amazing to see the bases of these ancient columns and how they formed the support structure for the church, as well as to see the Roman roads that once ran between them; he pointed out two niches on either side of the middle temple where the money changers did their business. That level is now two or three meters below the modern street level.

From here it would be a long walk to the metro, so I tried waiting for a bus. It didn't show after ten minutes, so I started walking; of course, I got no farther than the Forum Boarium before the 81 bus I had wanted buzzed past me. So I walked for about twenty minutes along the Circus Maximus, which did offer amazing views of the Palatine. Then I got to the metro, which was the unairconditioned, graffiti-bedecked, and totally fetid B line; it's diametrically opposed to the A, which is new, clean, air-conditioned and even has TV screens (why the discrepancy when the city only has two freaking lines, I don't know). It's rush hour so it's totally crowded. The train absolutely crawls through one stop. Then, after the second, it REVERSES and crawls backwards to the station. An announcement blares, the Italians grumble and get off, and I'm left with walking 25 minutes to Termini to catch the A line. It's hot out, so I'm sweating like a pig, and I grabbed a Diet Coke in the station which I was chugging like it was my job, when up pops Dustin, one of the art kids in my class! He's nice, but at that moment I really, really did not want to talk to anyone. Alas, I had to make conversation for another twenty minutes!

Thus, as I wrote above, it was kind of a mixed bag today; I wasted nine euro on a museum and got screwed by the metro, but I loved the Gesu and the excavations. Oh wait, and I got gelato--that definitely tips the scales in favor of "good day." :-)

The Etruscan Adventure

I set off bright and early on this Sunday morning at 8am to catch the bus to Cerveteri, home to one of the most famous Etruscan necropoli. The various guides (we have seven) suggested it would be completely easy; catch the blue COTRAL, or regional, bus from the Cornelia metro stop, and it should be at Cerveteri in 90 minutes. Lovely, except for that fact the COTRAL stop signs are tiny white squares affixed to the huge yellow ATAC signs, so I first wandered for a block in a particularly unpleasant area of outer Rome, wondering where the bus would stop, and then saw a series of blue buses head for a particular spot. I ran over and asked the driver of the first if he were going to Cerveteri; he said no, but the one behind him was--just as that bus, of course, pulled away.

Forty-five minutes later, another bus, this time helpfully labeled with Cerveteri on the front, pulled up, and a huge crowd appeared from virtually nowhere to board an already full bus. Now, I had been assuming this Cerveteri would be some out-of-the-way location and that I would enjoy a leisurely bus ride, but instead I stood in the aisle of said bus for 90 minutes, unable to see any signs indicating how far we'd come, and worried that two older Italian women whom I asked had no idea, apparently, where Cerveteri even was. Finally, the mystery of the crowded bus was solved when everyone got off at Ladispoli, a beachside town. Our bus then proceeded to park in the square and turn off; the driver said something that included the word Cerveteri, and then got out of the bus and closed the doors on us behind her. We sat there for fifteen minutes, until another bus pulled up, and everyone got off ours and onto that one; finally, I was able to ask the driver if we were indeed going to Cerveteri, and it turned out to be the next town over. Here, I managed to successfully request the right stop (you basically have to know where you're going so you can ping for the next stop) near the museum. At last!

I got into the museum for free since I was a student, but it was very unimpressive, and the reclining couple sarcophagus that I love and which the guides said was there was nowhere to be foumd, though its picture was on the brochures. After a very unsatisfying lunch from the only open bar in town, I headed off to the necropolis, 2km outside town on a very pleasant and shaded road. The entrance here, too, turned out to be free, which was quite nice. From the difficulty it had taken me, at least, to get there, I was expected it to be somewhat deserted, but there were three or four tour groups wandering around, all but one of which were French. I have some kind of magnet on me for French tours, it seems.

Necropolis, of course, means city of the dead, but nowhere is that more literally interpreted than in Cerveteri. The Etruscans laid it out on a gridded city plan, completely with main streets and side streets (several still with chariot tracks embedded in the tufa), filled with mansion-sized tombs as well as comparatively humble tenement-style ones. I wandering around for more than two hours, and it was incredibly easy to get turned around, inasmuch as there were all sorts of paths, steps, and even bridges (later additions, in that case) leading you off in different directions, as well as different levels and entrances to individual tumuli, and as every structure in the place is a tumulus, it's rather hard to find a landmark! When the woman at the entrance gave me a map, I didn't expect I would actually consult it, but I seriously underestimated the size and complexity of the site.

The Lonely Planet said of Cerveteri that you would feel like you were climbing around the set of Indiana Jones, and they weren't kidding. You're clambering up over worn-away stone steps and bare rocks, squeezing through plant-filled apertures between tombs, and climbing down steep flights into tombs so far below ground that you could see your breath in the air. It was not a place to be claustrophobic or afraid of the dark; some of the tombs had artificial lights placed in them, but many didn't, and even the lit tombs had passageways leading off into darkness. When you're thirty feet underground and the only one in this icy cavern, you can imagine all sorts of unpleasant things coming out of a hold like that! At the very least you might expect a rat, but there were none. In one tomb I apparently disturbed a bird while it was napping, and the fluttering of its wings reverberated in the chamber and was so freakishly loud--and more importantly, between me and the exit--that I jumped and yelled and then felt ridiculous. On the whole though, I felt awfully adventurous, especially as I was going it alone and not in these tour groups, but I did find several instances where my courage failed but I knew that Sean, had he been there, would have immediately considered it a challenge: in one case, I was on a higher level about ten feet above the road, and my choices were to go back around the other side of the tumulus, or inch my way along a foot-wide ledge around the side of the tomb bordering the road toward a crumbled staircase that looked like it hadn't seen a human foot in a hundred years. (Guess which one I chose).

After my exploring was over and I walked back to town, I missed the bus by a minute, and had to wait an hour in the blazing sun, as it was 1pm on a Sunday and even that one terrible bar had closed. My company was a strange old man who insisted on speaking to me in half-English and whom I could really barely understand; he told me that there were too many communists in the country, and that he didn't like where he grew up in Piedmont, nor did he like it there in the south, because everyone was stupid. He also said repeatedly, "Italia e finito!" Basically, a grumpy old man, the same the world over; just smile and nod. Anyway, on the bus back I did have a seat, which was a huge blessing, and it was a much less eventful ride. It was worth any mild travel difficulties for that experience!

Busy Saturday

This morning I set out on my grand tour of Trastevere. My first stop was the Villa Farnesina, the house belonging to the wealthy Renaissance banker Agostino Chigi. Raphael and his school frescoed a loggia with the story of Psyche and Cupid, and according to the story, Raphael kept running off during the painting process to visit his mistress, so the clever patron finally had her installed in his villa so that his painter could concentrate on the work at hand. It really is a marvelous work, although I'm so used to thinking of Raphel in terms of Madonnas and portraits that seeing his narrative work was definitely an alteration. I particularly loved the fruit-laden bowers that separated all the scenes, which were assigned to his pupil Giovanni da Udine.

Next I headed to San Pietro in Montorio, which is a hilltop church where, according to Christian legend, St. Peter was crucified upside down. In the early 16th century, Isabel and Ferdinand of Columbus fame commissioned Bramante to erect a little temple on the site, and thus today we have the jewel-like Tempietto, which according to the wall panel is considered the first architectural moment of the Renaissance (but don't quote that). I couldn't go in the actual church, however, because there was a wedding going on. I lingered, but as soon as the rice had been thrown, the priest locked the doors, so that was annoying. The next church on my list was Sta. Maria in Trastevere, which had a steady flow of tourists in and out as I walked up. I entered, only to find out that there was actually a wedding in progress--as in, the bride and groom were kneeling at the altar, and there were all these tourists in the back of the church taking photos! OK, I was one of them. It was just so amusing. Hey, if you choose to get married in June in one of the most touristy churches in Rome, on your head be it. Still, I didn't stay more than a minute because I felt bad, and I could tell that this would be going on for a while, so I went to Sta. Cecilia, which was a little difficult to find. When I entered the courtyard and found yet a third wedding party waiting outside the doors of the church for the couple's grand exit, I started to get a little annoyed. I was determined not to miss yet another church, so I parked myself with a couple of Asian tourists and waited until the bride and groom exited and got pelted with more rice (they are not shy about that in Italy, it's really like bullets--at San Pietro, the groom had his jacket protectively over his head as he exited) and then dashed inside to see Stefano Maderno's sculpted version of Sta. Cecilia's body under the altar, which was pretty cool for being a unique representation of what her supposedly uncorrupted corpse looked like when they dug her up.

After these three nuptial encounters, I was done with churches for the day. I grabbed some lunch, with happened to be pizza with fresh tomatoes and arugula that, while good, was a far cry from Naples, and then went to the Orto Botanico. It was magical! Flowers and plants and trees from all over the world, particularly massive specimens of palm trees, a forest of bamboo, a terraced rose garden...this place had it all, but it wasn't manicured or tightly controlled. Rather, there were winding paths and whimsical little stone staircases all over the place. It was also rather unpopulated, and--most unusual for Rome--totally quiet, save for the rustling of branches and the ocassional cry of birds. I saw bright blue dragonflies skimming over a pond in the Japanese garden, jewel-like salamanders darting away in the underbrush, and not one, but two sets of ducklings. In the end, I found a bench where my head was in the shade but I could put my terribly pale legs in the sun and sat for about an hour. Indeed, if I'd had a book, I could have stayed all afteroon, but eventually I had exhausted my abilities of rumination, and regretfully took my leave of the garden. For 4 euro, that was easily the best valued site in this city so far!

It was only about 2pm by that time, so I crossed the river and checked out Palazzo Altemps, which houses the Ludovisi collection, mainly ancient statuary. The palace is grand in scale, but the rooms were rather sparsely populated with objects, which I appreciated after a museum like the Borghese, where everything is crammed together; also, all the panels were bilingual, and a diagram of each piece showed you, with shading, which parts were later restoration and which original. The Suicide of the Gaul is probably the most famous piece. In its room I encountered a French tour group listening to a pair of musicians, a female singer and a man playing a strange, medieval-looking lutelike instrument with a very long neck. I listened to them for a bit, and congratulated myself on stumbling across this little concert. Only when the tour guide got up and said something in French and then conducted the musicians, and the group, into the adjoining chapel, where they proceeded to perform a hymn, did I realize that the musicians were not with the museum, they were with the group! It was odd, but still pleasant, as the rest of us museum-goers benefited from it.

After all of this, I finally headed home around 4pm. Alice and Caitlin went to the beach today, but I received a facebook message from Alice indicating that apparently it was much further off than they'd expected, so it's unlikely they'll make it home for dinner--which is disappointing, as we were going out for our weekly 'fancy dinner' tonight! Ah well, there's always Sunday.

Naples

Yesterday we had to get up at the godforsaken hour of 5:45 in order to be on the bus down to Naples at 7am. In a flashback to the HILL trip, there were only ten of us on a giant coach bus, so we were free to arrange ourselves as we pleased. The ride south took about three hours, and we went through some of the most attractive country I think I've ever seen in Italy: rolling fields dotted with round bales of hay, backed by tree-covered hills and behind them, enormous, blue-tinged mountains. I couldn't get enough of looking at it, and yet unfortunately, taking pictures out the window of a moving bus is not feasible. And move we did, for our bus driver was a true Roman and managed to get us into and out of at least a dozen spots that, logically, our gigantic conveyance should in no way have been able to move through. Other drivers didn't seem to enjoy this, however, and we were greeted by a chorus of honks wherever we went, particular in the tiny, crowded streets of Naples itself.

It's interesting to trace the changes from Florence, which is so tiny and quaint that it now almost seems humdrum, to grand and graffiti-saturated Rome, to the rather squalid deterioration and yet massive sprawl of Naples. All three cities are so very different, and having tasted them all within a week's time, I'll say that I'm glad to be in Rome right now. Florence is a magical place, but I've seen and done pretty much everything there is to do there, while I haven't exhausted a tenth of what Rome can offer, even if it is as loud as all get-out with those damn Vespas everywhere. Naples was dirty, poor, and crowded, but it occupied an amazing spot on the hills above and around the Bay of Naples, sloping down to the water. For some reason, despite the generally lower tone of Naples, we noted almost no graffiti; Rome has graffiti absolutely everywhere, even on beautiful, fancy buildings in the nice parts of the city.

Our first stop in Naples was the site of Herculaneum, which was destroyed by Vesuvius along with Pompeii. (Side note: Vesuvius is HUGE). It's less visited and less touristy, but thoroughly engaging. Unlike Pompeii, which was covered with ash that made excavation prettty easy, Herculaneum suffered the fate of being covered first with stones and then with a volcanic mudslide that turned into a stony substance that's now harder than marble. According to our archaeologist/tour guide, a very nice German guy who unfortunately talked waaaay too much, that meant that they had to dig down twenty meters with pickaxes, and whenever they felt something "soft" they knew they'd found a statue, or the walls of a house. There were no dramatically preserved corpses found in this town, for the most part, unlike Pompeii; for a long time scholars thought that most of them simply hit the road when stones started falling from the sky, but just a few years ago, three hundred corpses were found in what was then the shoreline, leading them to believe that they tried to run to the ocean to escape, but too late, and a tidal wave formed by the volcano's seismic activity either drowned them or pushed them back to shore to await death there. Either way, it's very sad to think of their desperation.

After this we hopped back on the bus and were deposited in front of the National Archaeological Museum, a great pink building, and went in search of lunch. Brunella, one of the professors, luckily knew a great pizza spot down the street, where a huge personal-size pizza with--drumroll---fresh tomatoes and buffalo mozzarella--was merely 6 euro, and which came with the entertaining antics of one of the most amusing Italian waiters I've ever seen. He sang, he danced, he said he could speak to his customers in six languages, and he put his hand over his heart and said "Beautiful!" when I walked by him, so he's all right in my book! I can now say that yes, Neapolitan pizza IS the world's best. Holy crap, I could have eaten it all day. Pepe's be damned, this was a thousand times better, and it did not fall apart when you tried to eat it, either.

The museum itself was a giant letdown. Somehow, the squalid surroundings of the city were echoed in the grandly-designed building itself, which featured stained walls, peeling paint, and dirty handprints on all the doors. Half of the exhibits our guide wanted to show us were closed, but those we did see were amazing: floor mosaics and wall paintings from the destroyed cities, including the very best examples of Roman wall painting in existence, as well as the "Gabinetto Segreto"--the erotic art collection, which, even in Italy, you had to be 14 to enter. We left Naples by 4pm, so there was no time to explore the city on our own, but I have to say that I wouldn't be enthusiastic about wandering aroun there on my own like I am in Rome. The ride home was, if anything, more beautiful than the trip down; the late-afternoon light was absolutely perfect.

Borghese Gardens and Gallery

We booked tickets a few days ago for the Galleria Borghese, which has stricter rules than any other museum in Rome: you must pre-reserve tickets, you can only go in at the start time of your ticket (today, at 2:57, we had to wait three minutes for the stone-faced guard to allow us to enter), you must leave two hours after your entrance, no exceptions, and you must check anything and everything: camera, purse, backpack, hat, umbrella, you name it, you can't have it! For all that, it's not more crowded or housing pieces more delicate than any other museum, so the reason for the strictness is unclear.

At any rate, the experience of the Borghese Gardens, a gigantic estate that covers a goodly portion of the upper-right hand corner of the city (if you conceptualize Rome in terms of the Lonely Planet map, which I do), was exceptional. When I went there three years ago with my roommates, Sara, and Tess, we had an early entrance time (my fault) and rushed to get there to pick up our tickets on time, 30 minutes before entry (my fault again, because I believed the warning on the reservation that claimed they erased your reservation if you weren't there 30 minutes prior on the dot--as I discovered from my current roommates, who rolled up at 2:55 today, that is not the case) so we didn't spend that much time enjoying the grounds. Today, I was there an hour early, so I strolled around the lake, which has a picturesque Grecian temple in the center, as well as a multitude of ducks, geese, and swans, and a plethora of turtles. There was a musician playing jazz near the courtyard of the museum, as well, so I listened to him as I waited for my roommates and Sanaz, another girl in our group, to arrive. You can rent this little covered carts that are actually double bicycles in the park, so they were zipping around all over the place; it looked like a lot of fun, but alas! I was by myself at the time.

The gallery itself is much smaller in scale than the Vatican, the Uffizi, or the Capitoline, the largest museums I've been in lately, but somehow I felt completely worn out in my two hours. Possibly it was the anticipation of 200 people all waiting to cram themselves through the doors at the scheduled time, only to mill about en masse in the first large gallery. Most people went left, so I went right, and got a few precious seconds with Bernini's David, Apollo and Daphne, and Rape of Persephone before people trickled into each of their rooms. Then I darted upstairs to the picture gallery, and managed to get a lot of my 'looking' done while the rooms were relatively uncrowded. Some favorites: Perugino's St. Sebastian, Raphael's Deposition, Savoldo's portraits, Fede Galizia's Judith and Holofernes, Canova's Paolina Buonaparte, and of course, all of the imperial portraits in the Hall of the Emperors, with their heads carved in porphyry and their busts in alabaster.

I've begun to feel that I'm being over-exposed to Bernini in Rome, but the statues in this museum always bring me back to that depth of expression and vibrant realism that makes him such a master. The delicacy of the laurel leaves sprouting from Daphne's fingertips, the roots forming on her toes, and the carefully distinguished texture of her flesh and the bark she is becoming, amaze me. In front of the Rape of Persephone, I was shocked to hear a woman tell her companion that she felt that the faces lacked emotion. Emotion! Hades' face is filled with triumph, savage and gloating, and the way his fingers are digging into the flesh of his victim's thigh is, my opinion, one of the unparalleled moments of Baroque art:

Meanwhile, Persephone is fighting so hard to get away that even her toes are contorted, and there are delicately sculpted tears on her grief-stricken face. So I don't understand how you could consider this "blank." Finally, the David has a warm place in my heart both for being the only representation of him in the act of flinging the stone that will kill the giant and for looking an awful lot like a young, pre-crazy Tom Cruise!

Tomorrow we head to Naples, a city I've never been to before, so I'm pretty excited. Buffalo mozzarella and real pizza, here I come (forget the art...)

Lateran to the Vatican

I started my outing today at San Giovanni in Laterano, the second-largest church in Rome after St. Peter's and the technical seat of the bishop of Rome, (ie, the pope). Together with San Paolo Fuori le Mure and Santa Maria Maggiore, it is one of the Church's four extra-territorial properties in the city. The basilica itself is quite amazing, and I think the work done by Borromini in the nave probably made it much more balanced and easy on the eye. However, it was the cloister outside that was the real gem; it was surrounded by twisty, Cosmati-inlaid colonettes, and displayed pieces of what was in the basilica before Borromini changed it up in the 17th century, including parts of a giant altar to Mary Magdalen, the piece of porphyry where the soldiers supposedly cast lots for Christ's robe, and four pillars supporting a granite slab that is supposed to be the height of Christ (apparently, he only had a couple of inches on me).

Next I went across the street to the Scala Sancta, which is supposedly the staircase from Pontius Pilate's house in Jerusalem. You're only permitted to climb it on your knees, which apparently pissed off Martin Luther back in the day, and I wasn't really interested either; there are two auxiliary staircases for normal people to climb, but the closed-off chapel "Sancta Sanctorum" of the popes at the top wasn't really interesting anyway. From there I went to the church of Quattro Coronati, only to find it closed, as the monks were undergoing spiritual exercises for two weeks. OK. San Clemente, the oldest church in Rome, was open, and had beautiful mosaics in the apse, but it was covered with signs banning you from taking photos, more signs than I've seen anywhere else. I guess they meant business. San Clemente is a stone's throw from the Colosseum, and also from the hill bearing the remains of the Domus Aurea, which were less interesting than the beautiful flowers and the views out over the city. There's something positively transcendental about the blue of the sky here, I can't get enough of it.

From the Colosseum, I took the metro home, but I got off one stop early and hit up St. Peter's, and there was no line at 5pm, so I wandered right in. St Peter's is always incredible, but I think having just seen the Lateran, I was much less taken aback by its scale. The light was perfect, coming in in huge shafts from the windows in the dome right down onto the altar. Mass started in the apse right as I came in, unfortunately, so I couldn't go see the Berninis back there. I did go into the grotto and see the tombs of the popes, including JPII, whoo. It's nice living about fifteen minutes from the Vatican because it's not like I need to cram all my "ocular desire" into one visit. I'll be back, within the two weeks (!) we have left.

The Minims and the Capitoline

We had a small field trip during class today (which meant class reconvened after lunch, which sucked) to SS. Trinita dei Monti, to see the anamorphosistic painting discovered on the corridor walls, done by Minim brothers during the Renaissance. SS. Trinita would be the church at the top of the Spanish steps, giving the steps their distinctive double bell-towered look. This would have been great, if we hadn't been grouped into a French tour, and only one person in our group, Alice, could translate any French. Nor was it a brief tour, either; the Sisters of the Sacred Heart, who run it now (it's still French property) were determined to give their countrymen a thorough tour of the property. Anamorphosis means distorted image; basically it's what appears to be an image of St. Francis di Paolo from down the loooong hallway, but when you walk past it, turns into a landscape with clever, tiny little vignettes everywhere, like a cow standing on what was, from another viewpoint, the saint's nose. Alice told me that part of the complex explanation was that this actually had something to do with the Reformation-era conflict over consubstantiation vs. transubstantiation, with the anamorphosis demonstration the changing of one thing into the reality of another thing...anyway, it was pretty cool, if annoyingly unclear due to the language barrier and thirty French people yammering on all around me.

After class, Bailey and I headed down to the Capitoline Museum--we cheated by taking the metro to the Colosseum on the pretext that it looked like rain, but considered the amount of walking one does within the museum complex, and how utterly exhausted I was by the time we reached the Pinacoteca anyway (so tired that I saw Tintoretto, Titian, and Veronese, and went "meh, can we go home?") it was a really good idea. Dear God, half of the ancient statuary with which I am familiar is in that museum (technically plural, because they are housed in two Michelangelo-designed palazzi on the Campidoglio hil! The Dying Gaul, Capitoline Brutus, Capitoline Venus, Commodus as Hercules, the Flavian Woman (love her). Meanwhile, the emperor Trajan, in particular, seems to have left behind more busts than any other emperor put together. I'm getting a little tired to seeing his bearded face bedecking every niche in every museum in this city. Take a seat, sir, let Caracalla have some spotlight--I love his angry, over-the-shoulder look; you always know it's him!

Sunday/Monday

Yesterday morning I set out at 9am on a church tour. Sunday morning is a beautiful time to be out in Rome, I discovered, even if it kept lightly raining; the only people out are rushing to church in their Sunday best (which has real meaning in Rome, I discovered, as I passed a group of men who seemingly stepped out from Versace ads) and you can actually hear the sound of your own footfalls, quite the rarity. First I hit Sant'Agostino, where I saw a very curious and tenacious seabird sitting on the doorstep of the church, seemingly unconcerned with a large German shepherd (sans leash) sitting a few steps below. Caravaggio's Madonna di Loreto was my object in that church. Next I went down the street to the Theatine church of Sant'Andrea delle Valle, with Giacomo della Porta's classic Baroque facade. Randomly I found myself in the church of the Spanish nation in Rome on Piazza Navona, then in the church of the German nation in Rome by the ruins of Domitian's stadium, and finally in some random church called Sant'Eustachio. This was mostly because a couple churches I wanted to see either didn't open until ten or had Masses going on, and while going in during a weekday service is often grudgingly permitted, going in during a High Mass is certainly not cool. Anyway, finally I went in search of Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza, a masterpiece of Baroque architecture by Borromini. Although it is totally ensconced with a palace, it's possible to find it within a warren of streets by looking for the unique, surging lantern:

I think I fell in love with this church, first because it's just so different from all the other Baroque churches, both inside and out--the interior is white, white, white, instead of crazy multicolor marble and gilding. Second, because it's such a creative solution to a spatial problem, fitting the church into the existing structure and harmonizing it with the surrounding portico. Plus he went above and beyond on creating the external profile, which I love. There are much better pictures here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sant'Ivo_alla_Sapienza. Framed by the doorway of the palace and then by the portico's arms, I think that this building is just visually entrancing. I couldn't pull myself away from it--I kept walking to the gate and turning back, just to watch the clouds passing behind the lantern. It's only open 10-12 on Sundays, as well, meaning I have only two more possible chances to take a look at it while I'm here.

Then, after this, I went home and tried to read Lacan, making the fatal error of doing so in bed, under the blanket because I was a little chilly. I fell asleep for four hours--and I do not nap. Such is the soporific quality of that 'philosophical' drivel. Today in class I had a serious issue with the fact that he feels that he can add something to evolutionary biology by bringing in the concept of the Gaze to bear on mimicry, by dismissing the notion of mimicry as being a biological adaptation but rather something to do with ocular fascination...some crap like that. Anyway, his only evidence is a book by one Robert Caillois, and I commented that I didn't feel he had any right, as a psychoanalyst, to be applying his crackpot theories to hard science, especially since mimicry IS an evolutionary adaptation. Our professor first said that well, of course this is the 1960s when Lacan is writing, perhaps it's out of date, then questioned whether what I learned from a biology text would really present the 'cutting edge' of biology research, and then finally assured me that since Lacan is quoting this Caillois fellow, he obviously did some research in the subject. Well, I looked up Caillois, and he's a freaking French intellectual, just like Lacan, and whose interests tend to literature, sociology and the sacred. NOT an evolutionary biologist or indeed, any kind of real scientist. That made me so burning mad. Lacan cannot simply synthesize everything and anything into his cosmology because he is Lacan! He can't toss off a reference to another French jackass and use that as a solid grounding for discussing hard science. I intend to confront our professor, whom we have all agreed is mostly winging this and totally contradicts himself frequently, about this tomorrow. I will have justice!

Anyway, bitterness aside, this afternoon we went on a Caravaggio tour with Liz Lev, and it was pretty fabulous. We started with the St Paul and St Peter in Sta. Maria del Popolo, then back to the Madonna di Loreto in Sant'Agostino, and then finally to the Matthew cycle in San Luigi dei Francesi (the church of the French nation in Rome, meaning I'm really covering my national churches here).

More on Florence

My last post was pretty rushed, so I want to put down some of my other impressions of going back to Florence this weekend. I always take notes in my little moleskine and then never follow up on them or answer my own questions, so I should really take care to do that more this time....

I pretty much saw all the works of art that I used for my paper on family memory in Quattrocento Florence first semester; almost all of the busts were together in one room at the Bargello (where my camera conveniently ran out of battery after I snapped Niccolo da Uzzano), I saw the Sassetti chapel in Sta. Trinita, and then I was stunned by the beauty of the Tornaquinci chapel in Sta. Maria Novella. The cycle is monumental, completely intact, and in full, vivacious color. I also confirmed that standing in the nave behind where the rood screen would have been, the side walls of the chapel, which contain all of the family portraits, are invisible, and in fact none of the secular images on the back wall of the chapel would have been visible due to the sixteen-foot screen. Now, if I could only figure out what the access was for family members (this being the main chapel and altar of the church), and more specifically women, I could make an even stronger argument for this being a very private as well as public commemoration of family lineage.

Donatello's David in the Bargello has been recently cleaned and moved to a higher pedestal, so that it's no longer necessary to crouch to see the decidedly triumphant expression on this otherwise rather delicate young man's face. Meanwhile, his St. George, I decided this time, is a hottie. I'd hit it. In Sta Trinita, there was a Magdalen by Benedetto da Maiano that bore a striking resemblance to Donatello's famous one, so I need to check out relative dates there, though I think Maiano is a generation younger. In the same church I encountered an altar by Neri di Bicci, about whom we read ad nauseum last semester because this middling-talent artist happened to leave behind the most complete and anal retentive set of account books for all of his commissions.

The Laurentian library was closed, but I did revisit San Marco and its beautiful Fra Angelicos. I realized on this visit that the long corridor perhaps was for lower-ranking monks, because almost all of those cells feature a white or black-grounded crucifixion scene, while the cells on the shorter hallway, closer to the library and also to the personal cell of Cosimo the Elder, had scenes such as the women at the tomb and the resurrection, so I wonder if it was a mark of spiritual status, that the younger monks perhaps required more inspiration for the 'mortification of the flesh,' as it were. Meanwhile, Ghirlandaio's masterpiece Last Supper (unfortunately positioned in the room which is now a gift shop, so no on spares it much of a glance) enthralled me.

Everyone in this scene is reacting in a different manner to the revelation of the betrayal: Peter holds the knife in anger, John collapses on Jesus in grief, one looks up to the heavens pensively, two look out at us, one (on the left, but cut off in this image) in a more accusatory way, the other more in sadness. The guy in the right corner looks like he's more interested in finishing his meal, and Judas has the "moi?" attitude. I even love the cat! Ghirlandaio is like my artist crush, or something.

In the Ognissanti I was scolded by a monk for not having something on my shoulders, which I did have in my bag but totally forgot as I sprinted into the church out of a rainfall. That in turn made me feel like this monk was giving me the evil eye the whole time I was in there. I waited until he was out of sight in the transept to sneakily take a photo of Ghirlandaio's St. Jerome, which I love, love, love. His St. Augustine, on the other side of the nave, meanwhile, doesn't speak to me--literally; he's looking up to heaven, while Jerome is leaning on his hand, meeting your gaze with a sort of "you're not interrupting, Vulgate, blah blah, who cares, how are things with you?"

It was nice to go back to the Uffizi, and nicer still that I had been there before many times and was not laboring under the 2.5 hr time limit my compatriots were. The Uffizi is not an easy museum; it has to make do with the U-shaped layout of the building, which funnels traffic in certain directions, but my main complaint is that when you see "exit" on the second floor, where the majority of the galleries are, the first-time visitor does not realize that it's going to take another 20 minutes to go downstairs and through whatever exhibit is going on (18th century in Florence, this time) to get to the exit at the other end, and even then, you are in serious peril of missing the total of three rooms that are after the turn-off for the exit: namely, the rooms that contain Guido Reni, Artesmisa Gentileschi, and all of the Uffizi's Caravaggio holdings. Sheer idiocy, since there's only a tiny printed sign saying "Caravaggio" with an arrow, competing with big USCITA sign beckoning wearing museum-goers in the other direction. Ultimately, only a couple of people in my group saw the Caravaggio room, mostly because they thought they had enough time to get out of the museum when they "Exited" upstairs, only to find themselves racing through the temporary exhibition. So on that level, the Uffizi can be discouraging, but what a joy to see the Tribune room again, Bronzino's Eleanora of Toledo, Ugly Baby, and Rosso Fiorentino's Lute-Playing Angel! The Venus of Urbino, the Doni Tondo, The Madonna of the Long Neck, Gentile da Fabriano's Adoration of the Magi, Simone Martini's Annunciation...the list goes on and on. It was like seeing old friends after an absence, and I was very happy.

I also did some more prosaic things; I visited the thrift store where I got both my coats, but found nothing good...I stopped in at Falsi Gioelli but didn't see anything that struck my fancy...I perused the market and was tempted by a green leather wallet, but reminded myself that I have a great leather wallet and having spent about 60 euro in Florence already, should probably conserve funds. Alice was generous and paid for our hotel room as a wedding present (to me only, lol), and Bailey and Caitlin were able to stay there as well, though their room was on the street on Via Faenza, so ours was quieter. They brought us breakfast in the room, which I have not seen before in Italy! I watched Italian TV for a while, which I haven't done here even though we have a TV. Then we ate dinner at ZaZa's, and it was fabulous, though I forced myself to choose between my favorite pasta and ribollita, and pasta won.

So it was all good and wonderful, but I did miss Carla, and also back when all of us were in Florence together. It was different being there with my current roommates, and a little frustrating because they needed to stop and gawk at everything (one of them took photos in almost every store window, I swear) and I kinda wanted to go off and do my own thing and not tour-guide, which I was able to do in the afternoon when we all went our separate ways. I understood it was all new to them, and I did try my hardest to be patient, I swear. Oh, everyone in my program has a paranoia about pigeons. I mention this because one of my roommates freaked out whenever one came near her as we ate outside Sta Maria Novella, and was making a lot of noise by yelling and kicking at them. It was kind of ridiculous....it's a pigeon! Live and let live.

Florence

We spent about 36 hours in Florence, during which time I visited the Uffizi, Sta. Maria delle Carmine, Sta. Trinita, Ognissanti, San Marco, Sta. Felicita, Sta. Croce, Sta. Maria Novella, the Duomo, and the Bargello. I think I Florence-d myself right out, because yesterday at like 1pm I was pretty done. I ran into Alice in the market and we took the slow, slow, SLOW train back to Rome together.

It was interesting to both see Florence again after a year, and also to see it after having been in Rome for a week. The differences between the two cities are striking, huge, metropolitan Rome versus smaller, medieval Florence. Ironically, it was Florence that felt more crowded because of the size of its streets, and yet I noticed a distinct lack of tourists--no line at the Accademia on a Saturday morning? Or at the Medici chapel? I only got run over by one Asian tour group, too--just one, not flocks of them in fisherman hats. However, I did get sassed by some Germans in Sta. Croce whose gigantic tour group was blocking the main aisle of the nave, the only way up to the Giotto chapels, and they had those stupid headsets on so they couldn't hear me ask them to move; when I tapped one woman on the shoulder, she reacted like I had kicked her, or something, and started snapping at me in German. Bitch!

One thing I was not expecting to notice as much was the attitude of the men in Florence; when we were there, it was par for the course that guys whistle at you, make kissy noises, say "bella signorina," etc, etc, and I never found it unpleasant. But after a week in Rome, when the men just act like you're another person (you know, normal), seeing that attitude in Florence was frankly disgusting. Some guy touched my arm and whispered something to me while we were out walking last night and my total reaction was "ewwwwwww he touched me!!!" Very mature.

Now I'm off for some early morning church visiting.....Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza is only open 10-12 on Sundays, so I have limited opportunity to visit it. Tonight, dinner at the art kids' apartment, which is apparently for sale for no less than three million euro. Sigh.

Giotto and Augustus

Today we had four hours to kill in between class and a video presentation by Mieke Bal, so I headed down to the Vittoriano to see their Giotto exhibit, which cost 10 euro but turned out to be quite the gem. Pretty much any movable Giotto or Giottesque painting in Italy was in the show, and if it was a fresco or couldn't make it, they had videos and high-def images that you could use computers to zoom in on and project onto a wall. It was like going to the Arena chapel in Padua again! The Lamentation of the Dead Christ there, in particular the hysteric cherubim, is probably my favorite Giotto work. Although the labels were in both languages, the wall panels were only in Italian, so it was good practice, as well.

I checked out the top of the Vittoriano after the exhibit, and it had unparalleled views of all of Rome: you could even see the top of the Pantheon. After that I headed to the Ara Pacis, which I both loved for its simplicity and 'purity' and was slightly disappointed in when I realized how much of it was reconstruction, and how few fragments actually survived. That's hard to tell from a picture. People are also ambivalent about the new Richard Meier building, but I think it harmonizes with the altar's overall effect, if not its actual style; it has plenty of light and doesn't distract from the altar itself, so I consider it successful.

Next I went up a very steep hill to the viewing piazza to overlook the Piazza del Popolo, another lovely view of the city, and then I was at the perfect time, four o'clock, to go into Sta Maria del Popolo, literally as the priest opened the doors! I was alone in the Caravaggio chapel for a few precious minutes, and it was awesome.

Finally, Mieke Bal screened her film, State of Suspension, which was a 'diagnosis' of the state of attitudes in Israel towards the conflict with Palestine, through the device of two Israeli comedians who did kind of Borat-like setups with other Israelis, but less ridiculous: for example, asking people to sign a soccer ball for a 14 year old Palestinian boy who had been accidently injured by an Israeli bomb, and to apologize to the camera for innocent casualties--you'd be amazed how many people refused, even a mother with her own 14 year old son said she couldn't feel sad about it. Then conversely, an Arab man refused to sign another ball for an Israeli teenager till they showed him the Israeli ball, and he noted that enough people had apparently signed to satisfy him before signing himself. It was an excellent movie and I wish I could write more, but we have to be at the train station at 815 tomorrow for the train to Florence. I am so happy to be going back, even if it's only for a night and without my Carla!

Yesterday

Yesterday was indeed a long day. After class we came home and I tried to do laundry before a scheduled tour at 4pm, but in an unpleasant throwback to Fairfield, after going to another building I discovered the three washers (for several hundred students) all had 25 minutes left to go on them. Since I was only out of underwear and socks, I handwashed them in the sink rather than truck over there again. There are dryers, too, but they're another 2 euro per cycle, and I have no problem with slightly starchy line-dried clothing.

Our tour was only of two churches, Sta Maria Sopra Minerva (literally above Minerva, so called because there was once a temple to her on the site) and Sant'Ignazio di Loyola. They're situated right next to each other, and one is Dominican and one Jesuit, so no love lost back in the day. Our tour guide was an actual art historian who, I heard it whispered, charges 400 euro an HOUR for her private tours. At that price, I should take my PhD and move to Rome. She was a really wonderful guide, engaging and humorous while giving in-depth info instead of only trivia. We looked at the Carafa chapel in Sta Maria, where Filippino Lippi brought perspective to Rome from Florence, and then we went to Sant'Ignazio, where Andrea Pozzo's illusionistic ceiling and dome literally made my jaw drop. I ended up tracking down the sacristan and paying 5 euro for an image of the ceiling, which they frustratingly did not sell in postcard, but rather in mini-poster form.

After that we had a few hours before we were supposed to meet Robert, one of the professors, in Trastevere for dinner, so our whole group walked a leisurely pace, ate delicious gelato, and got lost in Trastevere. I'm the only person who has been to Rome before and who knows any Italian, at all (not saying much), and thus they seemed content that I should figure out where we were going--which was annoying in so far as no one else felt like looking at a map, but then even more so when they (the art kids) grumbled when we got lost,because they hadn't even wanted to walk the twenty minutes from the other side of the river in the first place--they had wanted to take the tram, on a beautiful, sunny afternoon. Ridiculous. Walking around with just my three roommates, I've only gotten us lost once since we've been here, and that was because the road we followed turned out to be a tunnel that took us underneath the cross street we needed. Unfortunately, yesterday I neglected to take into account that not all things on maps are drawn perfectly to scale, and what seemed on the map like a street at least ten minutes after the bridge into Trastevere was more like right after we crossed. After one of the art kids whined about how we should take a taxi, I relinquished map duty to Alice in disgust. It ended up taking us all of fifteen minutes to get to the square, walking through one of the prettiest, leafiest, tree-lined neighborhoods I've seen in Rome, so in my sister's phrase, shut your piehole! Getting lost is part of traveling, and when we got lost the other day, we wound up at the beautiful Borromini church with the cloister garden. The unexpected can be awesome.

Rainy Day

It poured this morning, which made our half hour walk to school somewhat less enjoyable than on Saturday. However, after class we made our first visit to the gigantic indoor market called Trionfale, where we finally procured tasty food at good prices. In fact, as we speak, my roommate Caitlin is making some kind of roast chicken dish over arborio rice.

So our afternoon itinerary included five churches. The first stop was Sta Maria Maggiore, one of the largest and earliest churches in Rome, with nice Cosmati floors and 5th century mosaics. Then we went to Sta Pudenziana, an adorable 4th century church with an amazing apse mosaic that represents the first use of imperial imagery for the figure of Christ: seated on a throned in imperial garb, while the apostles make the senatorial gesture of acclamation. The third church was San Pietro in Vincoli, which contains the relic of St. Peter's chains as well as Michelangelo's Moses, which I've seen before but is still quite arresting. Then we got a little lost trying to find the last two, because a road on the map was actually a tunnel that went under the cross street we were supposed to turn on to, but as often happens on trips, where we wound up was just as great--San Andrea delle Fratte, a church whose exciting Baroque exterior (designed by Borromini) did not at all match the boring interior he inherited from a previous architect. There was however, a beautiful cloister with lemon trees and a fountain formed from a giant, moss-covered stone.

Finally, we walked through the incredibly congested area around the Spanish Steps to the Piazza del Popolo, where we went into the Caravaggio church minutes before it closed and....couldn't find the paintings. Literally, we did a round in the church and couldn't find them. We're going there on a class tour, but I wanted a glimpse of the conversion of St. Paul. This was the only free afternoon we have this week, as we have tours, a program dinner, and we're heading to Florence on Friday, but I'm having so much fun so four. Walking four or five hours a day is really quite energizing, and I've had to forgo Coke Light in favor of water, but that's ok.