Botanical Musing

Yesterday's beautiful weather has dulled back to clouds and humidity, although it is sprinkling pleasantly right now. I had to go into school to pick up the Venice and the Veneto volume that Jasmine had squirreled away in her carrell, and somehow the 1.5 hour round-trip voyage has tired me out, and I just want to sit here on my bed, and listen to the rain.

I fell in love with a particular type of flower in Rome, a bright purple one that grows in huge falling masses of color and leaves. Perhaps it's better referred to as a flowering plant, really. I don't know what it's called, and neither did Caitlin nor Alice, the resident botanists in our apartment, who helped me identify other delicious floral scents like honeysuckle and oleander. I encountered this plant all over the city, but I only took a few photos of it. The first was in Largo del Febo, a little curved bit of road somewhere above and to the left of the Piazza Navona. I think it was a Sunday morning and I was on a church-seeing expedition in the neighborhood. The photo doesn't capture the brilliant color of the flowers, but more so the plant's sprawling mass, a waterfall of green coming down the side of this building.


The second photo I took was up on the Parco de Traiano, which sits on a hill beside the Colosseum. This hill contains the ruins of Nero's Domus Aurea, or Golden House, which was decorated with such an embarrassment of riches that a later and more sensible emperor, Trajan, filled it in with rubble and built a bath complex for the people on top of it. When it was uncovered during the Renaissance, people discovered that what they thought was a grotto, or cave, was covered with paintings, and it became quite the thing to go spelunking down there to check them out. Michelangelo, Raphael, Ghirlandaio, and a whole host of other artists went in, often leaving a graffiti signature. The type of decorative motifs that were drawn from and inspired by these Roman wall paintings came to be know as 'grotteschi,' and from that we have ultimately derived the word 'grotesque,' referring to things that are strange and distorted, like the screaming heads enwreathed with foliage that the Romans liked to fill their walls with.

I didn't make it into the Domus Aurea on this trip, but I did go up to the park to look around and admire the view of the Colosseum. There are ruins up there, great hulking frames of a barrel-vaulted structure, and somehow, possibly because I'd had a little too much sun that day, I found myself thinking, Oh, is that the Domus Aurea? Uh, no, that is underground, hence the whole grotto thing. The ruins are Trajan's baths, and nothing really special about them. But the best part, I thought, was leaning over a railing and seeing these flowers cascading down about thirty feet. The angle of this photo doesn't make it seem like it goes down very far, but I had to huff and puff up a big staircase from the road next to the Colosseum to get up there, and the plant started up at the railing and went all the way down. Combined with that blue, blue sky, and the palm trees...heaven.



The last photo I took of the mystery flower was a day or two before we left, when I went exploring on the Aventine hill. I saw Santa Sabina, and then kept going up hill till I found the Priorate of the Knights of Malta, and then I turned around. On the walk back I saw these beauties, with graffiti written between the plants in Italian that said "you want to see that I love you? I love you!" Ah, romance. Of course, nothing will ever beat the graffiti Sara and I saw in Ravenna, which said "I love you because you make me dream"--even if that did lose points for being spray painted onto a Fascist-era government building.


That's it for my love affair with the purple plant. I wish I could find out what it is so that I could at least dream of planting it in the house we'll have someday. Well, I'd have to plant it well away from the house, or one day we might wake up and find purple flowers blocking out the windows. Dreams!

Laocoon, Lacan

I think I'm just going to start posting the couple dozen or so of my favorite photographs from Rome. At the very least, it'll make flipping back through older entries more visually stimulating. This, like the Boxer, is a Hellenistic Greek sculptural group called Laocoon. It was dug up in Rome in the early 16th century (Michelangelo, who was inspired by this type of emotional, writhing, athletic figure, was present at the disinterment). The group depicts the tragic fate of the Trojan priest Laocoon and his two sons; Apollo sent one of his sacred pythons to strangle the three of them after Laocoon warned his countrymen not to accept a certain wooden horse the Greeks were offering (obviously you can guess whose side Apollo was on in this tiff).


The statue now stands in the octagonal sculpture courtyard in the Vatican, right near the equally-famous Apollo Belvedere. I took this photo in between tour groups that generally cluster so tightly around the damned thing that you can't get a shot of it. It's a beautiful statue, and what's more, it perfectly captures my mood right now, struggling as I am against my own version of a murderous python, the 20-page paper I have to turn in in three weeks. In other words, Lacan, my old enemy.

Loving puns and wordplay as he did, I'm sure he would have appreciated the similarity between his own name and the statue, but he probably would have followed it up with some incomprehensible crap about how this sculpture symbolizes the anguished desire that is supposedly the chronic condition of every human being, since we are tormented by the lack of the Real, lost when we entered into culture via language. Right. The only thing tormenting me right now is the desire to be DONE with this paper. Except I haven't started it yet--this is just the note-taking portion! Ahhh!

Love

I just went through all my Italy photos on facebook and saved my favorites to my computer. I think this is my absolute favorite photograph that I took:


It's a detail of a Greek bronze from the Hellenistic period called the Boxer. This is the full image:


The entire sculpture is incredible for its veracity, right down to the cauliflower ears that modern boxers still get from being beaten about the head so much, and also for its emotional intensity (a hallmark of the Hellenistic style). The expression on his face is evocative, even if you can't figure out exactly what he's feeling--is it just exhaustion from the fight? Is he turning his head to speak to an admirer, or be heckled by a critic?

I love the close-up I took of his face because you can see the effort the sculptor put into to making this a realistic image. The bloody wounds and red lips are actually cast in a copper alloy which gives them a different color from the rest of the sculpture. The missing eyes would have been made of glass or stone, attached by hooks on the interior of the eyelids. I think I like it better without the eyes, with just those gaping, dark holes giving nothing away.

This sculpture, perhaps more than any other I saw in Rome, seemed to me like a living, breathing figure, a man who has turned his head briefly for a word or two, and who in a moment will finish unwrapping his hands, get up, and make his weary way home.

It All Works Out

Really, today's thwarting was partially my own fault; I could have stopped by the campus library yesterday before meeting my fellow GAHO officers for dinner, but my lazy butt preferred to simply take the R7 into Center City rather than get off at Temple, grab the books I needed, and then take the subway downtown. So I went back to Temple this morning (which is not so much as a hassle as it is an expense, since I don't have a metropass for this month) only to find that the one book I really, really needed was not there--despite being listed as in the library on the catalogue. I was so annoyed at having come back into the city for nothing. I need this book to plan out my independent study for the fall, so it's a matter of some urgency.

When I got home, I emailed Jasmine hoping she might have a copy (since it's a book on the Veneto), and then I went shopping for a dress for Heather's wedding. She's getting married at 11:30 on a Sunday, which kind of rules out the black dresses I own. Imagine my delight at finding not one, but two dresses! One is chocolate brown and one is blue. I haven't decided if I'll keep both; I want to show them to Sean next week. The pleasure of not being thwarted while shopping was great on its own, but to place a cherry on the cake, Jasmine emailed me back and sheepishly admitted that she had committed the same sin that I so often have--taking a book from the stacks and sticking it in your carrel without actually checking it out. It's just such a pain sometimes to haul everything downstairs, check it out, and haul it back upstairs. They should really put a self-checkout kiosk in the carrels! That would probably cut down on a lot of book-seeking rage like my own this morning. But even though this means I have to go into school again to collect said book from Jasmine's carrell, at least I know I can get it and I don't have to wait for PALCI. Ahh.

Dinner last night was fun, even if my fellow officers do get awfully tied up in bureaucratic crap like whether we should buy full bagels or minibagels for the orientation breakfast (hint: no one cares). Only at the end of dinner was there the inevitable comps discussion. Caitlin asked me outright if I was taking them in the fall, and when I just responded with an "Ummm...." she took that to mean I had decided to wait and do them in the spring instead (which I had totally forgotten was even an option, mostly because who in their right mind wants to write a thesis and study for comps in one semester?). It's not surprising that she thought I would put it off, either, considering that I have three courses and TA duty; Caitlin and Nicole are taking only two classes each to have enough time to prepare.

After Rachel sent me what the professors suggested in terms of prep, I have to say again (even though I've said it here how many times?) how glad I am that I'm not studying for these for real. For example, Dr. West, who does Northern Ren and Baroque, suggested no less than seven texts. Just for the North. Meanwhile, Dr. Silk sent a three page bibliography for modern and contemporary. Who the hell would have time to read all of that, much less memorize it, by October? Woof.

Getting Something Done

I finished the outline last night! It clocked in at 84 pages, which would almost work out to 10 pages of textbook per page of outline, except for that bit where I skipped the hundreds of pages dealing with non-Western art. Sorry, rest of the world.

I had originally planned to finish it this morning, but I was so tired of doing it that I pushed on until about 8 o'clock just to make.it.stop. I discovered that my knowledge of modern art pretty much stops in the 1970s, because I had a devil of a hard time trying to figure out what should be canon for the next couple of decades--unfortunately, my two survey texts disagreed with each other on most of the artists. I've come to rely more and more on Gardener rather than Stokstad, but it has definite flaws, like having no mention of Robert Maplethorpe, and no section at all on modern photography, just a couple of Cindy Sherman images.

This was the very last image that I put in my outline. It's too big to post here if you want to be able to actually read the text. Fitting, I think!

The Joys of Productivity

Today was a good day! I finally dropped off the JCrew dress that I'm returning at the UPS box and deposited the last hefty tax return that I'll be seeing for a few years, plus I made banana bread with some extra bananas Phyllis had picked up that were beginning to head south. And it turned out really well, as opposed to the time I tried to make it with her previous oven and it burned on the outside by the time it was done on the inside. Progress!

I'm also progressing nicely in my outline, having made it up to the 1910s and Cubism by the time I called it quits around 4pm. The outline is up to 68 pages, and if, fingers crossed, I manage to finish by Thursday morning, I plan to sneakily print it all out in the grad lounge when I stop by campus. Meredith asked me yesterday if I'm managing to retain anything from this, and the answer, somewhat surprisingly, is yes--the wider themes, along with artists and titles, yes; dates, not so much. Whatever. Meanwhile, in an example of just how randomly my mind does tend to cast up these bits of data, just as I was clocked on the head by a falling box of crackers while wrestling Phyllis' Cuisinart out of its storage spot, I mentally shouted, not 'fuck!' but rather, 'Tilman Reimanschneider!' I mentally cursed using the name of a 16th century German sculptor. Yes, I think this endeavor is paying off, and how!

In other relieving news, Dr. Cooper wrote back to me again and said that Dr. Bolman is figuring out what I should tell people about comps--but more importantly, she said that my friend Agnes is in the same boat. That's not surprising, since I knew Agnes has some kind of fellowship; she's been TAing since we started, the only other MA student to be doing so. I'm happy for her that she doesn't have to take the exam, but let's be honest, I'm more excited that I'm not going to be the only one in the leper colony once everyone else takes their seats in that exam room!

Finally

Thank you cards...finally...finished. It only took what, two months, and no end of squabbling and nagging. I had these high hopes that this would be Sean's task and that I wouldn't have to do it. Oh, pipe dreams. In the end, I wrote them all out and Sean offered suggestions for people who aren't my friends or family (about 80 percent of the guest list). Apparently his endless gifts of charm and faux-cheerfulness do not extend to the kind of platitudes necessary for thank-you cards, because you'd think I was asking him to wade into a snake pit, the way he acted. We also got into an argument a few weeks ago when he claimed that thank yous were 'obviously' invented by some wishy-washy Victorian woman and are an inherently female notion. Grrrrr.

In other news, I baked this morning! I made blackberry cobbler, which Sean had requested for his birthday. Judging from the fact that he ate half the pan in an hour, I guess it turned out pretty good. I'm so domestic.

Rain, Rain, Don't Go Away

I’m sitting here enjoying one of our frequent brisk rainstorms in the front room. Being on the third floor means I have really great views during storms, especially with these huge windows. I don’t like closing the bay windows because then the glass gets so streaked with rain I can’t see. Plus, I always like to leave a window cracked no matter how hard it rains, just so I can hear it.

I’m taking another break from this seemingly-interminable outline, which is up to 54 pages. Here’s a typical entry:

Richard Boyle, Earl of Burlington, Chiswick House, England, begun 1725: Neoclassicism found favor in parliamentary England, where flashy Baroque was equated with absolute monarchy. Preference for simple style derived from Vitruvius via Palladio via Inigo Jones. Variation on the Villa Rotonda, with simple, rational façade. English Palladian architecture often set in informal gardens and decorated incongruously with Baroque or Rococo interiors, as is the case here.

Don’t worry, they make sense to me. Sometimes I write in full sentences, sometimes not. At least I’m not writing this out by hand like my friend Rachel is! I met up with her and this other girl who dropped out of the program last year for dinner last night. It was a really fun time, but the subject of comps came up and she asked me if I had begun studying, what I was doing, etc.; I wasn’t going to lie, so I explained that I’m not taking it, and why, and then immediately said please don’t hate me! Rachel’s really nice, and she’s also only going for her M.A., so she was genuinely happy for me—but she acknowledged that if she wanted her PhD, she’d be a little annoyed knowing someone got out of taking the test. Which maybe doesn’t bode as well for having the other girls find out. I still don’t know what I’m going to do about it, because it’s doubtless going to be brought up on Thursday at our GAHO meeting. And the girl that I feel will be most annoyed about it will be there. Gah.

ETA: I just totally bit the bullet and emailed Dr. Cooper to ask her advice about what I should or should not communicate to the other students re not taking comps. I just said it's been coming up in conversation and I'd like her advance--consciously trying to be least needy and 'waaaah tell me what to do' as possible, because graduate professors really, really don't like that. I hope she says something better than "don't say anything!"

Gah

I'm already starting to get that queasy feeling about running out of time for the summer--even though classes don't start until August 31. On my to-do list:

1.) Finish outlining the survey textbook (I'm on Renaissance right now)
2.) Finish clipping out images from the extra survey book to make pseudo flashcards (er, I think I've made it to Roman art, clipping neatly takes time!)
3.) Write a 20 page philosophy paper about...ocularcentrism? Lacan? Althusser? I don't know!
4.) Attend the various pre-semester GAHO meetings and TA orientation
5.) Figure out what I'm doing in my directed research with Dr. Cooper this semester
6.) Decide what my master's thesis (ahem, qualifying paper, oh, ahem, first chapter of my dissertation) will be on.
7.) Panic.

Why am I blogging now when I could be outlining! Ahhhhh.

CT Weekend

Just a few short days after leaving CT, I headed north again on Saturday for Anna and TJ's engagement party--make that their second party, the family party having taken place the weekend before. Two words: drunken karaoke. Another two words: Theatre Fairfield. 'Nuff said? To be fair, the TF kids didn't monopolize the stage; Sean performed several songs with Pimp Juice and Meredith, and Heather did a few numbers, although she got progressively more intoxicated and spent more and more time talking to Donut instead of actually singing, and then later in the evening, she resorted to trying to convince me to go up and sing by repeatedly grabbing my boobs....needless to say, I was not persuaded!

Meanwhile, Sean and I got our professional wedding photos back, and they're quite lovely, even though they're not retouched or anything. Now we just need to pick which ones we would like to have fussed over and which ones we're content with printing at CVS for a quarter an image. We also went to see the Harry Potter movie, and I was fairly enthused for most of it, but then really disappointed with the end. They left out so much, and this time, I think they left out parts that were what made the story as affecting as it was. God only knows how they'll butcher the last book!

The next three days will see me conquering another six chapters of the survey, or so sayeth my schedule. Tomorrow it's Etruscan and Roman art. Then Sean is coming down on Friday and staying until Monday! I love my husband.

All Things Begin Anew

I just chose a new template for this blog, which has been holding on to the lighthouse motif for what seems like years now, partially inspired by the other object of novelty in my life, the new laptop I bought this morning!

Yesterday's reinstallation of the operating system on my ailing Fairfield-era laptop did not go as perfectly as the two reinstallations of previous years; it was almost immediately slow and buggy, which is not what you expect when you've supposedly returned it to factory condition! There may have been hardware issues after all this time. I really thought I could get more mileage out of that computer, not only because I had a great deal of affection for it, but because it was free in the first place. However, the last straw came when my old laptop suddenly refused to recognize the wireless card, and then wouldn't let me reinstall the drivers. You will never deprive me of my interwebs! I dashed out to Best Buy yesterday and almost made an impulse buy, but I found the next step up model on sale at Staples for fifty dollars more, so I went with that. $588 later, I am the proud mama of a (literally) shiny black Inspiron. I figure that one Dell lasted me six years, so I might as well stick with the brand. Yes, I have succumbed to Vista, but it's really fine--it's not like I do a lot of complicated stuff on my computer anyway. I installed my Office 2003, which works fine, but every time I start the computer it complains that it can't find the CD for office. I just have to X out of that notice, but it's a little annoying.

So all this drama with the computer has drastically reduced my productivity, as most of yesterday was spent gnashing my teeth over the old one and today was spent setting up and toying with the new one. I outlined two chapters of the survey textbook, and my goal for tomorrow is to get through the chapters on Aegean and Greek Art. I might even draw up a schedule, who knows.

It's very surreal to be back in Pennsylvania--delightful to be in my own surroundings, and not living out of a suitcase or with my things crammed into Sean's closet, but definitely surreal. I suddenly understood yesterday that during that six weeks while I was abroad, I was in this amazing bubble where I didn't really have to worry about a whole lot and could just live in the moment, but now I'm back in the real world and there are so many things to be worried about! This is the first time that I haven't had a job during the summer, either, and even though I know that there's really not much time before September, it seems in a way a huge expanse of time. But there will be trips back to CT, and moving Sean down to Virginia in a month, and it will all fly by, I know it. I miss Sean too, already!

Summer Begins

Well, I'm sure most of what I write now will seem prosaic after six weeks of writing breathless updates about European adventures. Ah well!

It's funny how a day or so after my return to the States, the nasty weather that had been plaguing CT since I left vanished, to be replaced by gorgeous blue skies and 70-degree days! *Cheshire cat grin* I'm enjoying it thoroughly. Today I read the end of Book 6 and the second half of Book 7 of Harry Potter, in preparation for the movie coming out this week. They always suck, but this one looks like it might be a teeny bit less crappy than the others. And as teen movies go, anything has got to be better than Twilight, right?

This past week has gone by pretty quickly. Sean had a lightning round of jet lag on Tuesday, but he rallied quickly. We went to Siam Orchid for Thai with Linda and Gary that night to tell them all our stories. We went to see Public Enemies with Anna and TJ Wednesday night and it was pretty bad--the dialogue was stilted and the performances wooden, which I wish I didn't have to say about Johnny Depp. Thursday night we had dinner with my sister at Linda's, which was about as bearable as I have come to expect from our interactions. Friday night we had dinner with Kathy and Ron, which last until after midnight and involved three bottles of wine. Afterwards Sean and I agreed that we always have an incredibly fun time with them, because even though on the surface you might not expect it, they're hilarious. Finally, my whirlwind social week concluded with dinner and a tasty pitcher of Sangria with Meredith last night at Barcelona in South Norwalk. Well, I am just exhausted. Kidding, kidding: this week, paper-writing and studying begin in earnest!

Spanish Reflections

I went back and re-read my posts from Spain and compared them, rather unfavorably, to those I wrote in Rome. In Spain I was always rushed, always using a computer I was paying for, while in Rome, I was sitting in the kitchen on Caitlin's computer, relaxed enough to come up with well-phrased descriptions and commentary on what I'd seen that day. Even my photos are often grainier and less well-framed, a product of too many sneaky photos taken of interiors of cathedrals in Spain, where apparently the photo is anathema but bare shoulders and knees are not (I'll take Italy's version, thanks). I console myself by saying that my experiences in Rome are more necessary to my course of study than the art and architecture of Spain, so it's OK that the latter is a little less well done than the former.

Having been home two days now, I should probably jot down my concluding thoughts about our time in Spain before it completely flies from my head. First and foremost, of course: we had an awesome time. Except for a couple minor bits of thwarting (Alhambra tickets, the expensive train getting back from Segovia, the crazy man on the train back from the Escorial) everything worked out extremely smoothly for us. Our hotels were wonderful, especially in Segovia, and the food was uniformly delicious (Sean enjoyed the Basque restaurant, even if I didn't, so I'll give him that). We had a couple moments of bickering, normal to any trip where you're together 24-7, but nothing even so grumpy as that morning in Olympia when Sean famously wanted to sit and I wanted to go. We also had so many funny moments, the chief among them being the Cheese Fork Incident and, my personal favorite, Sean's continued threat to denounce me for sneaky photo taking by shouting "Photo aqui! Swarm, swarm!!"

Despite this, we had no problem agreeing that in our ranking of places we've been, nothing and nowhere will come close to touching the wonder that was Greece. Spain might rank above Sean's trip to Italy, but in terms of a general comparison between the two nations, I definitely prefer Italy--its language, its food, its customs, its landscape (trees, flowers, rivers, oh my!) Sorry, Spain!

El Escorial, Farewell, and Dublin Postscript

On our last day in Madrid, we decided to sleep in somewhat in preparation for a really early morning on Monday. Then we headed out to the Monasterio Real at San Lorenzo El Escorial, which involved taking the Cercanias or regional trains. Talk about slow travel--after the AVE fast trains, this felt like I could have walked there faster! But the scenery was beautiful, lots of mountains (and more importantly, TREES, which are so lacking in this dry country) so it was quite a pleasant ride, especially after I banished Sean to another row of seats because he was determined to make me his bored-time plaything.

When we got there we took a shuttle bus up the hill to the monastery, and I totally recognized the street next to it where we had lunch on the NWC trip. The monastery is very austere and imposing, but I loved the structure. We had to get the audioguides, which I generally hate doing, in order to be able to visit the Pantheon of the Kings, but it turned out to be fairly well-done. The Pantheon seemed so much bigger when I was 15! I still remember Ms. Sibley asking if the king had a son and if he were single after seeing the kind of luxury they could expect for their burials. Lol. I had forgotten, though, exactly how many royal folks are buried down there; there were like 9 rooms of sarcophagi, and the guidebook dutifully told you every name of every person in each room, in case you wanted to know where Prince Baltasar Carlos, son of Phillip IV (the Pinto!) is buried. There was a 20-sided sarcophagus containing children of the Hapsburgs who died in infancy, which was impressive, but also quite sad. Unfortunately, the basilica was closed for restoration, so we finished up our visit in the library, which is Sean's new favorite place in the world, probably.

Back in Madrid, we cast about for a restaurant, since it was Sunday night and most of those recommended by the Lonely Planet weren't open. The one we ended up at, La Finca de Susanna, turned out to be the best one of all--the interior was really designer and made it look like it would be uptight and expensive, but the food was really cheap and amazing. I had croquetas and albondigas (meatballs), possibly my two favorite foods in this country, and Sean had a rice/marinara/crawfish dish that was really tasty, despite my being horrified by the crawfish still having eyes and tentacles. Which Sean ate ALL OF. That is nasty.

The next morning we rose at the obscene hour of 6am to head to the airport. Our flight leaving Madrid was uneventful, except for right before we left; I had reserved two aisle seats for Sean and I, and I was sitting with these two little girls, one of whom apparently was supposed to be next to Sean. Then this jerk showed up who was supposed to be sitting in the window seat one of the girls was in, and he refused to sit by Sean, so the attendant asked me to move. I couldn't say no, not when these girls had total sadface on. But then this guy even refuses to take my seat so the girls could have the window; he wanted the window seat no matter what. Such a jerk. Anyway, Sean let me have the aisle halfway through the flight, because he's nice. :-)

We landed in Dublin around noon and had five hours to kill before our flight home. Sean had had a seven hour layover on his way out to Spain and had taken the bus into Dublin for lunch (totally my suggestion, btw), so we did the same. It was a very brief intro to Dublin, but the place we went for lunch, the Queen of Tarts, was awesome and the food delicious. For dessert I had what was advertised as the city's best carrot cake, and they were not lying!

The flight home was likewise uneventful; I watched Pink Panther 2, Bolt, and Herbie Fully Loaded. The two bottles of wine I purchased in duty-free really helped with the last two movies, let me tell you. Then, having been awake for a full 24 hours, we landed in New York, got an extremely fast shuttle van back to New Haven (1.5 hours...it's supposed to be 2.5) and then chauffeur service from Daniel. And then bed! And now I'm here. Lol. End of honeymoon!!

Leaving Segovia, Madrid Again

Last night we had dinner underneath the aqueduct and paid a record 61 euros for the privilege. Sean and I wound up swapping meals again, my lamb for his suckling pig, because it was not raw enough to suit him (I liked it!). There seemed to be a thousand sparrows zipping all over the place, something we´ve seen elsewhere in Spain, but it was most striking as they zoomed and wheeled around this amazing, ancient structure. Then we walked around after it got dark around 11 and went back out to the Alcazar. The gates were closed and the building mostly hidden by the trees in the park in front of it, but we stood by a wall overlooking the plain below, where you could see the Templar church and the one long, windy road running off over the horizon. Sean really loves Segovia, and he actually said "love" which I was very surprised by--we agreed that we could definitely live here for a year or two if we had the opportunity. We had a drink at the fairly snooty bar in our hotel, sitting out in Plaza Mayor, and then it was off to bed.

The next morning, our cab ride to the train station took us back by both the Alcazar and the aqueduct so we could see them both in the daytime one last time. At the train station, though, trouble ensued slightly. It turned out there were only first class tickets left for the 11am train, otherwise we would have to wait until 1:30, which was not cool. We wound up paying 52 euro to travel half an hour back to Madrid, and personally I didn´t think first class on an AVANT was any better than regular on an AVE. And there was no snack machine on this train, so boooo. Anyway, we returned to Pension Corbero after the lengthy metro ride down from Chamartin station (no point in spending 20 euro on a cab when we´re not in a rush), had lunch at Maceiras, Sean´s favorite restuarant here for their pulpo (octopus) and this massive seafood and rice dish.

Then we split up; Sean went to the Palacio Real and I went to the Museo Thyssen-Bornizsma, which was 800 works of some of the greatest Western artists from Duccio to Lichtenstein, all from one family--and mostly one man´s--collection. Unbelievable. Holbein´s iconic Henry VIII portrait is there as well as Durer´s Christ Among the Doctors, a Van Eyck Annunciation that was painted to look like marble sculpture, an amazing John Singer Sargent portrait of the Countess of Sutherland, Van Gogh´s Stevedores at Arles, Degas´ Dancer in Green, , and a whole host of other wonders. I really enjoyed the Expressionist section, actually, especially Kirchner´s riotous color. I enjyed Derain in the Fauve room as well, especially Waterloo Bridge. There was also a gorgeous Dali, the one with the tigers jumping out of each other´s mouths and the elephant with long, tiny legs, as well as a beautiful Rothko, Green on Purple. I did realize, as I skipped these rooms entirely, that I don´t like Dutch art--I hate landscapes and still lifes and genre pictures, blech. I´m also not over-fond of Impressionism of the Monet and Pissarro variety, mostly because I can´t tell them apart, and American Impressionism a la Winslow Homer doesn´t stir me much either. But on the whole, this collection was LOVE.

Afterward I strolled down Paseo del Prado and stopped to make sure of the hours the Prado would be free the next day, when I discovered it would actually be free in twenty minutes, from 6-7:30. I had agreed to meet Sean at 7, but I figured it would be worth it to wait and go in. As soon as they let me in I ran to the shop and bought the guide so I wouldn´t have to worry about it later, and then I revisited all the pictures I really loved. Van der Weyden´s Deposition really pops when you walk into that room--I actually heard a guy gasp when he came in. The Raphaels in the first room I liked more than any Raphaels I saw in Rome. Durer´s 1506 Self Portrait, as well as Antonio Moro´s depressingly accurate portrait of Mary I; Bosch´s Garden of Earthly Delight; Goya´s 2nd and 3rd of May, extremely striking. Upstairs, allllll the El Grecos, allll the Velazquez, especially the Feast of Bacchus and the Crucified Christ. Titian´s Charles V at the Battle of Muhlenberg. Goya´s family portrait of Charles IV. The endless portraits of Philip IV or as Sean and I have dubbed him, the Pinto. All amazing. Too much to name, especially with my half hour of internet cafe time swiftly running out.

Anyway, last night Sean and I had dinner at a Basque restaurant that Sean had recommended, but I didn´t like the food overmuch and the cider, which he loved, tasted like really dry wine. For dessert they brought cheese and gave you a dainty little cheese fork and knife (it was kind of a fancy place, where your waiter stands, in his suit, basically watching you eat) and I indignantly pointed out to Sean that I do not need a cheese fork to eat cheese because my hand is my cheese fork! He found this very amusing. After that we walked around, down the the Palacio Real, and wound up in the park where Columbus´statue is at the tail end of the Pride Parade festivities, and then made our way home.

Segovia

Our traveling this morning went smoothly, despite a momentar "kink in the ointment," which I´m so pleased about. We took the train back to Madrid, which was only half an hour, and got in at 11, planning to catch the 12 train to Segovia. Then the guy at the ticket counter told us that trains to Segovia leave from Chamartin station on the other side of the city! The ensuing cab ride cost 20 euro (eep) but we got there in time and made the train, which turned out to be even nicer than the last one. The train to Toledo was an AVE fast train, and this was an AVANT, which I guess is even faster, because it was still just half an hour to Segovia, while the regional train takes 2.5. This train was also deluxe enough that it had an onboard drink/soda machine!

The Segovia AVANT train station is 5km outside the city and looks like it´s the middle of freaking nowhere. There were only two cabs waiting outside, and I scooted nimbly past a couple of Spanish women to score the second one, to Sean´s amusement. Screw them, I wasn´t taking the bus! Our cab took us by the aqueduct so Sean could have his first glimpse of it. Our hotel, the Infanta Isabel, is right on Plaza Mayor, and it is super, super deluxe. It cost a ridiculous 110 euro for one night, but we have a huge room, huge bathroom, and an antechamber with huge closets. Oh, and a balcony onto Plaza Mayor with a view of the cathedral! Sooooo: totally worth it! Sean is currently sleeping on the king-sized bed, and was thrilled to find an extra pillow in the closet instead of having to negotiate with the concierge for one in Spanish.

Anyway, we dropped our things and headed over to the cathedral, which was a pretty Gothic structure on the same lines as that in Toledo, except this one, begun after 1521, is considered the last true Gothic cathedral. It really feels like we´re in Paris when we´re in these huge churches with the ribbed groin vaults. The cloister, while charming, was not as cool as the double-level one in Toledo with all the waterspouts carved into different shapes, like a guy doing a somersault, a child clutching a log, a frog on top of a fish...etc. The facade was also disappointing compared to Toledo´s, but I guess the latter´s being the seat of the Church in Spain probably meant more money went their way.

After this we headed over to the Alcazar, the "Sleeping Beauty" castle perched on the edge of the mesa that Segovia occupies, overlooking tree-covered slopes and blue-tinged mountains on one side, and rolling fields of hay interspersed with exposed rock on the other. It was both as beautiful as I remembered from eight years ago and also even more enjoyable; this time I was more interested in the Mudejar architectural and decorative elements than the suits of armor. We also climbed the tower, which at 152 seemed not much more than the church tower in Toledo from yesterday, but oh, how different it was--these were the huge, curving medieval steps that require a leap and a bound to get from one to the other. I finally emerged onto the roof and was rewarded by really incomparable views of the surrounding countryside and back toward the city and the cathedral. Sean was, of course, in his element, and he probably didn´t even break a sweat! Grrr.

Leaving the Alcazar, we headed down the hill toward a round church built by the Templars in the 13th century, an octagonal church based on the plan of the Holy Sepulchre, to house a relic of the True Cross, and thus called Vera Cruz. The relic itself has since been moved, but the church remains the property of the descendants of the Templars, the Knights of Malta. Now, here´s a reason you can´t trust guidebooks all the time: Lonely Planet said that the curious two-story round chamber in the center of the church was where the knights stood guard over the relic, but it was actually in the chapel to the right of the apse, as both the church´s printed guide and the name "Reliquary Chapel" attest. The guide said that not much is known about the function of the center chamber, and it may have been a place for them to consecrate their arms before heading off to war.

On the way down to this church, which also afforded spectacular views back up toward the Alcazar, we found a shortcut that was a very steep staircase down a cliffside. We were joined by an American who we started chatting with named Tom, a high school principal from Vermont. Lo and behold, Tom grew up in Hartford and graduated from NWC in 1968, AND he knew Mr. Carney! It´s a small world--we haven´t even met a single person from the East Coast yet, and here I find a co-alumnus. He told us about how repressive NWC was back in the day, which he said really influenced him in his teaching and later his administrative career, to not follow their example. Interesting.

After this we faced an exhausting trek back uphill to the center of town, where I availed myself of a hot shower while Sean watched Batman the cartoon in Spanish, this being the only town so far where there was no CNN or BBC. When I was getting dressed I was watching this sitcom about a really trashily dressed young woman working for a posh older man who has a snarky butler...and then I realized this was the Spanish version of the Nanny! Lol. The US version is better, I think, even without understanding all the dialogue--no one can imitate Fran Drescher´s voice.

Both Sean and I really, really love Segovia. We decided it´s our favorite, displacing yesterday´s favorite of Toledo because this is even more beautiful and has a more varied topography in the surrounding landscape--plus trees, which are very important to break up the never-ending Spanish palette of brown and red. Sean, surprisingly enough, enjoyed Madrid, which I was not expecting, since he generally dislikes cities. It was Granada he liked least, because he said it didn´t have much character, and in comparison with the other places we´ve been, it´s actually kind of true. It´s too bad we´re leaving tomorrow, especially because it´s so much cooler here than it´s been the past few days in Toledo--I actually almost felt a little chilly when I left the hotel! Oh, did I mention it stays light here till 10pm? It´s kind of crazy.

Now I need to rouse Sean so we can get some dinner...

Toledo

Right now we´re in Toledo, sheltering in a tiny internet cafe from the sweltering heat outside, which is just now reaching the upper 90s. Apparently we were being well-treated by Spain´s weather before this point (for which I am sincerely grateful). Meanwhile, we saw on the BBC world weather report the other night that it´s still really crappy in the States. Lol.

So Toledo is awesome. The train from Madrid took just 30 minutes, and then we took a cab (naturally) up to Hotel Sol, which is quite charming, even if it took us a day to figure out the air-conditioning system. Unfortunately, that moment of revelation came to Sean at about 3am, after which point I woke up shivering because the room was suddenly ice cold, and then managed to have two bad dreams, one of which involved my mom being a shady politician who wanted me to have someone executed for her...I wouldn´t do it and she said she was disappointed in me!

Anyway, to return to our narrative, after recharging the batteries yesterday afternoon, we headed out to the Cathedral, which is quite suitably grand, built on a massive scale in the Gothic style. I remember being absolutely overwhelmed by this building years ago, and finding it totally incomphrensible, but it didn´t seem quite so big now, probably after all the other huge churches I´ve seen. The entrance fee was a rather ridiculous 7 euro, but it was pretty well worth it, especially as there was a painting gallery with a few El Greco paintings, including his ´El Expolio´. I took some pictures sneakily, as every freaking place here won´t let you take photos! AND they charge admission. The nerve! At least they don´t enforce the no tank top rule like in Italy.

After the cathedral we went to the Sephardic museum in one of Toledo´s two remaining synagogues (there were once fourteen, but all the rest were destroyed after the expulsion of the Jews in 1492). It was free, number one, and really quite interesting, with a huge marquetry wood ceiling in the main hall, mudejar vegetal carving on the walls, and Hebrew inscriptions in a frieze, very similar in style to the Muslim decoration in the Alhambra. The women´s gallery upstairs was also preserved, to let you see how women would have experienced the services separately. Sean, who is serving as the guest editor of today´s edition, is remarking that he would like our future home to feature such a gallery. I say, boo to that, and get a job!

Dinner followed, and in a total turnaround to our usual eating pattern, wherein Sean orders something that I end up preferring to my own meal, leading to much attempted pilfering from his plate amid aggrieved attempts to defend his food, we actually switched meals completely. I had ordered roast suckling pig, which came in gravy, and Sean neeeeeds sauce on his food or it is "just terrible, simply awful", and meanwhile he had ordered the unfortunately-titled pig´s knuckle, which turned out to look like a fried drumstick (albeit with a pig´s hoof still attached...gross). Then we wandered down to Puerta S. Martin, the romantic stone bridge that I particularly associate with Toledo. The walk back was long and uphill, and Sean finally towed me part of the way using my purse´s strap as a lever, only to discover that the pink stars on the strap had actually dyed his beige shirt....oops. It mostly came out with soap...mostly.

This morning we went first to Museo Santa Cruz, which had a show of really beautiful El Grecos, followed by a visit to Santo Tome to see the Burial of Count Orgaz. Awesomeness!! Then we went to Iglesia de S. Ildefonso, which has two towers you can climb for a view over the city. Only 135 steps, not that bad, really, and they were modern steel steps, not this medieval curving tiny slices business you find in most churches. At the top, of course, Sean wanted to jump over a railing and climb a ladder up to the belfry, which was clearly not there for tourists, but he insisted that it was Ok as there was no sign specifically forbidding it. Ugh. A wife´s work is never done. (Sean claims my wedding ring symbolizes "Killer of Fun." His new motto is "fifty more years?").

Now we´re going back to San Juan de los Reyes, which was closed last night when we strolled by. Isabella and Ferdinand cheekily built it in the heart of the Jewish ghetto, and decorated the exterior with the chains worn by Christians in the prisons of Granada before it fell in 1492. Whoot!

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!