Italian Christmas

So that was fun, exhausting, aaaaaand exactly nothing like Christmas, really.  Despite the lights in the streets, the tree in the Salone, and Sean's month-long warbling of Christmas carols, it has never felt less like the holiday to me.  Then again, I've never spent Christmas outside the States before.

We celebrated the (rather warm) day here with a massive potluck, the belated centerpiece of which was Ji Hye's fried chicken.  Sean made a huge pot of pasta fagioli, so at least there was something traditional going on, haha.  After the food, there was bocce and soccer in the backyard, Sean winning a few games of the former; later that night there was pool, with Sean "Sleeper Cell" Gleason losing a few games. I even played with Rick against Helena and Steven, two of the kitchen interns, and managed to do pretty well, even if we lost in the end.  I went to bed before the Christmas sing-along started around midnight, but sitting in bed chatting with Lakshmi I could hear the rousing strains of "Dominic the Donkey" and other classics being belted out by a mildly intoxicated crowd on the floor below.

Although there were no wrapped presents this year, we still got each other gifts!  Mine was writing to the restaurant in Belluno where we had dinner in August to see if I could order a bottle of their specially-made amaro that Sean had been so fond of.  They never replied, but I found the pharmacist who makes it for them, who was not only willing to send two bottles COD to Rome, but threw in all sorts of cosmetic samples with it!  Sean, for his part, visited the antique booths in Piazza Borghese and found a matted print of an engraving after Titian (of a painting I'd never seen before, which is in the Louvre).  This was dismembered from a 19th-century book, and when I looked up the identifying marks of the engraver the first result was a matching leaf in the British Museum, which is cool!  He also bought me a bottle of Refosco, which we shared last night around the pool table.  I still dream of the Sancin Refosco on the menu at il Refolo in Venice, but that doesn't seem to be available anywhere south.

Our Christmas Eve was awesome too, I should say; after the Academy lunch a big group of us went to see Star Wars (in my and Sean's case, for the second time!),  got extraordinarily overpriced drinks at the bar on top of Hotel Bernini and wandered around before settling in for dinner and very serious Star Wars discussion at Insalata Ricca.  Some folks stayed downtown to go to midnight Mass, but Mass in the Pantheon was cancelled, strangely enough, with almost no warning and no explanation.  It was a full moon and a beautiful night, made slightly less so when walking over the Tiber--the smell of starling guano is seriously gross!!

Assorted

This morning I walked to Testaccio to visit the Christmas "car boot" sale, which is basically a holiday flea market.  On my way down the hill from the Academy, I saw that the flames were lit at the Garibaldini. Virtually everything on the Gianicolo memorializes Garibaldi and his ill-fated attempt to conquer Rome from this very hill in 1849.  This is a Fascist-era monument to members of his army (their names are inscribed in the crypt below).

After a stroll through the flea market, and then again through the massive Porta Portese flea market in Trastevere (where I had a delicious porchetta sandwich), I picked up some wine at a shop in Trastevere and took the bus up the hill.  The driver was on his cell phone and blew past my stop, despite the blinking "stop requested" sign, and was about the go past the next one, too, until I barked "FERMA QUI!"  He had the nerve to give me an offended look in the mirror, too.  This stop is in the middle of Passeggiata di Garibaldi, where there is a massive equestrian statue of him overlooking the city of room (nearby there is another of his wife Anna, also on horseback, holding her baby in one hand and a pistol in the other).  Since it's Sunday, the little puppet booth was open and a performance was going on, with Pulcinella (who becomes Punch, of Punch-and-Judy fame, in British puppetry) being threatened with a beating by a doctor (I think?) for playing the mandolin underneath his window.

Speaking of monuments, yesterday Sean and I went to the Vittoriano, aka L'Altare della Patria, aka Mussolin's Typewriter.  We were there to visit the national museum of Italian emigration, which was very interesting.  It was also sad, because you realize how much of the harrowing descriptions of how miserable life had to be for these people to flee, and how hard they had it in the US or Argentina or Brazil, could easily be used to describe the situation of modern-day refugees.

A 7-euro ticket takes you up to the very top of the monument, which has an unparalleled view over the city of Rome (better than the Dome of St. Peter's, I'd say, since that is well outside the center).

The front of the monument, overlooking Piazza Venezia, allows you to see along Via del Corso all the way to Piazza del Popolo and its obelisk.

From the rear, it overlooks the Forum and the Colosseum.  Note that these pictures were taken minutes after we were joined by approximately one BAJILLION starlings, wheeling and darting through the sky like so many bats, or bees.  I find it pretty unsettling, actually (and the city has tried many methods to discourage them, since they leave metric tons of shit).  You'd never expect to be finding sea gulls a noble or calming presence, but compared to the starlings they're practically bald eagles.  I found myself hoping the gulls would eat a few of those little fuckers, but maybe they taste as bad as they sound!