Homeward bound

We're about to go to the airport and fly home. I'll do a big last-week-in-Rome post once we're back in NYC.

But here's a photo of Sperlonga - a wonderful place to spend our last full day in Italy yesterday.

Latin Soul King

Latin Soul King, originally uploaded by pbartleby.

This bit of graffiti is on the wall right outside the front gate of our school. Rumor has it that it's about Reginaldus himself.

Thursday - paintings, a pinecone and a party

Monday night, post-laundry, Pat brought home Amanda and we had gnocchi for dinner at home. A nice relaxing night in for once.

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.

A Day in Rome, 12:15

A Day in Rome, 12:15, originally uploaded by pbartleby.

Yesterday Pat documented his day in 15 minute increments. Now you can see our normal Roman lives - not every day is a trip to the Vatican or the mountains.

Map of New York

Vatican Museums, originally uploaded by pbartleby.

In the Borgia Apartments at the Vatican Museums is this amazing map depicting a Europe crowded with detail and information and another giant continent to the left with almost nothing but a list of city names along the coast. I'm standing more or less in front of New York, although I couldn't pick out a name. This could be because the writing was tiny, the writing was upside-down (in fact, the whole map, at least from a navigator's perspective, appears to have been upside-down), or because I have no idea what the old Latin name for New York might have been.

Monday - friends, flea markets, films & fish

Remember what I wrote about Saturday needing to be an early night? Um, no. I met Pat and friends up at his class and we picked up pizzas at Al Pau and wine to bring over to Joe & Juliet's place. We ended up hanging out on their deck for hours, then moving inside for Pat and Joe to play guitar.





So much fun but we didn't leave until after 4AM.

Sunday morning came early but we still walked down the hill for the Porta Porteuse flea market a little after 10. After going to another giant flea market (we assumed they were connected) which looked like everyone had just emptied their junk drawers onto tables, we found the Porta Porteuse. This thing was HUGE. No idea how many stands, stretched out over several blocks along the river. Look at Pat's horrified reaction:



We ran into our friends from the night before (nice to see we weren't the only slackers who missed the 6AM opening) and did lots of souvenir shopping.

After we'd exhausted our feet and wallets, we all took the bus for lunch and a movie. We ended up eating in an Irish pub (delicious fries, scary-looking pizza) then gorging on pick-a-mix candy that our lovely Roman concession dude gave us girls at a reduced rate. The theater was a tad warm though since we'd been craving A/C during the heat of the flea market. We saw Harry Potter in English - much darker than the early movies, but in a good way.

After, we parted ways and Pat and I relaxed at home a bit before heading back into Trastevere for sushi dinner at Take. Yummy sushi, including some things we hadn't seen before like raw scallops and seared salmon. Annoying American students nearby meant we looked great by comparison and we got our orders before them and with a smile.

Today was laundry day and therefore a day of relaxing at home. Pat was working all morning on the computer, so I read and tanned between loads. I've read so many books this summer, the current being Calamity Physics. So far it's pretty gripping.

We come back a week from tomorrow and I'm getting more and more excited. Tomorrow we're going to the Vatican museums and after that I don't feel like there's any one thing we still need to see. I'm sure we'll continue walking around every day and going out at night, but I'm realizing this is our first trip to Rome together. Whether we come back as visitors or to live here again, we don't need to fit every church, museum and landmark in right now.

Saturday update - food, falls, fossils

Wednesday night we ended up canceling Greek Club and instead 9 of us went out to dinner for Justine's last night in town. She had heard of this restaurant just north of the Theatre of Marcellus. It was really good - I should find out the name. I had a zucchini blossom, a mixed salad and grilled turbot. We all split some tiramisu for dessert.

Thursday we got up early (which has continued all week and probably will until we leave...) to go on the class trip on St. Thomas Aquinas. First we met everyone at Termini Station - Kristin R. you know it well! We took the train to catch a charter bus to Roccasecca, site of the castle where Thomas was born (see above) - nice country down there.



The locals come to fill up at the mountain spring. We found the road up to the castle closed for construction so we hung out by the bend in the road until a local man filling bottles told us his wife had keys. He drove of to get her while Reginaldus went through the life of Thomas.



He came back with his wife and she led us through the construction out to a small church which turned out to be the first church dedicated to St. Thomas Aquinas. It was lovely, so was the view. R. said that church had always been closed on his visits up there. So no castle, but a nice substitute. She then led us down into the medieval town into a more ornate church before we found the bus and left town.

Our next stop, after the bus dropped us off at the station for a brief train ride, was a tacky little town for lunch. We wandered all over and never found any place nicer to eat than this pizza shop. Their specialty? A fried roll stuffed with french fries and a hot dog. Ew! But Tim loved it - crazy Brit.



I stuck with the mini calzone.

After lunch we took an hour-long bus ride to Formia. I slept the whole way. The beach was as lovely as last time and we swam as long as we could. Despite some gross kids taking pictures while we got our clothes back on over our suits (and their stupid mothers who didn't believe us), the beach trip was relaxing and fun. But when walking quickly back to the station to make the train, I tripped and flew through the air. I somehow ducked my head, avoiding smashing it into the bench I ended up under. My leg wasn't so lucky.



Between our friend's superior Italian and Pat's awesome triage skills, we were able to get everything we needed from the swarm of helpful Italians that came to my aid. Water, ice, disinfectant, bandages - even a ride to the station.

The driver (a dude, or ragazzi, if I ever met one) wanted to take me to the hospital, but I knew it was only a surface scrape and nothing worth that. He got us to the station VERY fast, where the local cab drivers had already heard about the girl who fell. Ha! They swarmed around me and brought more disinfectant, wincing/cheering when Pat used it to clean the cut more.

We met our group and took the train to Fossa Nova, to the monastery where Thomas died.




We walked along the highway to Antonio's for a delicious dinner. Wine, local buffalo mozzarella, olives, pasta, fresh fruit. Love this place. It made me forget my leg (please ignore the salt-water hair and sunscreen face) and have a great night.



After dinner Antonio himself drove Reginaldus, Pat and I to the train station while the group walked. Train, home, bed.

Friday we somehow woke up time for our appointment at the Galleria Borghese. Lovely museum with some beautiful Bernini sculptures and Caravaggio paintings. We declined a walk through the park (my leg was still sore) and a 16 euro drink at Harry's Bar and instead viewed the Cappucine monk bones. Eh. We did duck into St. Andrew's (2nd largest dome in Rome) before having delicious salads at l'Insalata Ricca near the Largo Argentina.



I took a nap when Pat went to class and then we had a nice relaxing dinner at home. Gnocchi with pesto, frozen strawberry cake from the bakery and champagne.

This morning we went on the Scavi tour beneath St. Peter's. Despite their no camera policy and our fellow tourists' inability to realize it's a small space, the tour was fantastic. We walked under the Basilica, seeing tombs of pre-Christian Romans, then Christians and then finally St. Peter's tomb. Even if the validity of the bones is in question, it does seem like the tomb itself is Peter's. Sort of amazing that despite the hill being leveled and 4 churches being built over it in 2000 years, the tomb is still directly below the center of Michelangelo's dome in St. Peter's Basilica.

Speaking of dome, after the tour we decided to skip the Vatican museums again (I know, I know, but the long lines and 4 hours needed to view everything keep putting us off) and instead go to the top of the dome. Giving in a bit to my leg, we paid for the elevator for the first part. But then we had to climb the 320 stairs to the top.



Gah! If you are at all nervous of small spaces, avoid this! The walls slant in at one point when you are rounding the dome and I almost lost it - and I have no fear of heights or small spaces. Still, once at the top, there is a great view of the city.



We went down and looked for our friend the nun in the gift shop at the base of the dome. No luck. We did a bit of book shopping on the street before taking the bus back to our neighborhood. We stopped at a middle eastern place and had what they called kebob panini - actually gyro sandwich. Hooray for non-Italian food! But we did stop for gelato also - this time I tried 3 flavors, coffee, nut brittle and fig. Hooray for Italian food.

Since lunch, we came home, napped and Pat went to class. Tonight I'm meeting him and some classmates for dinner out. But we can't stay out too late - tomorrow morning we're braving the giant flea market at Porta Portese bright and early.