Tuesday we slept in then went to the Vatican museums around 1PM. This is the perfect time to go - the line took less than 15 minutes to get in, moving the whole time.
The museum itself is really interesting in design. When you enter, it feels like an airport - security, ticket booths that resemble customs booths, escalators.
But then on the main floor you can start to see how beautiful it really is. Pat persuaded me to go to the less crowded wing with the Classical Antiquities and Pinacoteca first. So amazing - cool Christian sarcophagi blatantly copying the earlier Roman style. And the paintings of Fra Angelico, Raphael, Caravaggio, di Vinci were breathtaking.
Bolstered by the calm of the relatively empty wing, we walked across the courtyard toward the main event. Loved the courtyard - full of huge sculptures including a giant pinecone.
There were also photos of the Michaelangelo's and Raphael's ahead. I'm not sure why - is it in case it's so crowded you can't see them?
We entered the second wing and first we saw huge halls full of Roman statues, the Egyptian collection, animal sculptures, the inner courtyard with the Laocoon sculpture, gorgeous mosaic floors.
Then we entered the fray - huge groups of tourists on the hunt for the biggest checklist check in all of Rome, the Sistine Chapel.
They really send you on a serpentine route. Past the modern collection (mostly OK paintings by faithful artists, with a couple good Dali's and a Ben Shaun mixed in), hustled through the Raphael Stanze, on to the Chapel. Since the Vatican now has a deal with some Japanese company giving them full rights to photograph the chapel, there are supposed to be no photos but lots of people were still snapping away.
The Chapel itself is beautiful - I hadn't seen it since 1999, soon after its restoration. I remember how shockingly bright the colors seemed compared to the photos in books pre-restoration. But even after only 8 years, the colors have faded a bit again. The paintings on the ceiling are just wonderful. Despite the guards pleas of "Silenzio" it was really loud since every sound was reflected off the walls. We finally sat along the back wall and took it all in.
After the Sistine Chapel, the Borgia apartments were nice, but we were museumed out. They did have some cool maps of what navigators once thought the world looked like. We took the circular staircase down and outside just as the museums were closing around 4:30.
After we left the museums, we were hungry and tired. Luckily we spotted Old Bridge gelateria - possibly the best gelato of the trip. I had creme brulee, amaretto and fragola. Pat had a coffee frappe. Still hungry but not interested in the tourist menus at the restaurants nearby, we found a sandwich shop with NYC style options, like hot sauce. I cannot tell you how good spicy food tastes after months of very little heat.
We wound our way back towards St. Peter's and took the bus home. Pat went to his last class then called me up and I met him and some friends for sandwiches at the kebab place. We hung out in the piazza late drinking white wine together. Afterwards, Pat and I had more gelato (bacio and vanilla for me) on the walk home, bringing our day's total of sandwiches to 3 and gelato to 2 each. I tell you, it's a good thing we walk all the time!
Yesterday we shopped for food for our last Greek club party. My menu: prosciutto con melone, Greek salad, bread, homemade tsitsiki, pastitsio (one vegetarian, one meat), grilled shrimp, Greek-diner lemon potatoes, red wine and grilled plums for dessert.
We went to the fruit/veggie market first, then the supermarket and about 4 butchers before giving up on the strangely absent-from-Rome lamb and buying beef to be ground instead.
We went back to the outdoor market and made the fishmonger's day by buying over a kilo of his sweet shrimp. Pat had been documenting the whole day, taking a photo every 15 minutes. So you can see our everyday life in excruciating detail. Ha!
I started cooking and cleaning once Pat went to class. Luckily I started with the potatoes as they unexpectedly needed to marinate in the lemon, oil and broth for 2 hours. I quickly moved on to the pastitsios, making the red sauce in 2 pans, one with meat, one with just eggplant. Thank God the bechamel was vegetarian and I only had to make one - I was running out of pots in our ill-equipped kitchen. I boiled the penne and assembled the pastitsio's in the only pans we had that would fit them (an oversized frying pan for one, another in a soup pot) and finally baked the potatoes. While those were cooking, I made the tsisiki, chopped veggies for the salad, vacuumed and straightened up, took in the laundry from the yard and actually found a minute to shower.
Right before Pat and the rest of Greek club arrived, I sliced up the melon (saving some for the vegetarians) and dressed it with the prosciutto. One girl helped me slice the bread and assemble the shrimp kebobs while everyone else carried out the chairs and plates to the backyard.
Eating starters and wine, they read a paragraph of Greek. Break for dinner. And finally, once they'd read the death of Alexander (and I'd finished Special Topics in Calamity Physics, that freaky, creepy, fun book), we had dessert.
After dinner, we soon headed inside and some people left. The rest of us hung out chatting until pretty late. Now today we're being lazy and cleaning up after the party. I think we might head up to the Janiculum park and read outside for a while before Pat's class.
Our broker called this morning and made our exit appointment for next Tuesday. She and the landlord will come here to check out the place and pick up our keys. I can't believe how soon this is happening! Tonight we're going over to a friend's place for dinner, the last class trip is Saturday and there's possibly a beach trip Monday. But things are winding down; already many people have left and it really feels like the end.
