Roman Holiday

After my last post, I spent Tuesday morning at Westminster Abbey, which was gorgeous and a little creepy in its own right. It's really more of a cemetary than a church, it seems to me, but it was really nice and interesting to walk through.

But the most interesting part of this past week was, of course, my weekend trip to Rome. Robyn, Drew and I hopped on a plane Friday morning to Rome Ciampino airport, and we were well into the city and settled into out B&B by about 2 p.m. We stayed at the Little Italy Bed & Breakfast, a tiny place owned and run by a Dutchman and his girlfriend. It was very basic, but very much just what we needed for two nights. It was central to most everything we needed to get to, and we really ended up walking for most of the trip and only taking public transit a handful of times.After we got all our things put down we headed across the street to a trattoria for a very late lunch. Fortunately for us this place doesn't close until 3 p.m. The Italians eat lunch at about a normal (for us) time, and then the resaurants close until about 7:30 or 8 when they open for dinner. Only tourist trap resraurants open at an American dinnertime.

Lunch was excellent (this is Italy after all -- land of pizza and pasta), and we then walked over to the Santa Maria Maggiore, a church (one of many) that was beautifully decorated and full of admiring tourists. All of the churches we saw during the weekend were beautiful and very different from one another. Every available space in them -- walls, ceilings doorways, pillars, trim -- was covered in a fresco or painting or moasic. And the insides of all the churches sparkled. After the church we went in search of Trevi Fountain in order to toss in the obligatory coin (we hope a 2-pence coin is OK) so that we can be ensured of a return to Rome. Here for the first time we became aware of the enormous mass of fairly agressive entrepreneurs who will try to sell you anything from cheap jewelry to scarves to little men made out of colorful balloons and googly eyes. And it is difficult to get them to leave you alone.

After Trevi, we just wandered. We were actually looking for the Pantheon but missed a turn and ended up at the Monument to Vittorio Emmanuel II (left). This picture really gives no idea of the scale of this building, which was built to honor the first leader of a unified Italy. You can see this monument from almost everywhere in Rome, and we happened upon it by mistake. But from this point you could see many parts of ruined fora, and the Colosseum was just down the street and beatiful at dusk.

We did manage to find the (very impressive) Pantheon that night, as well as Piazza Navona with its painters and picturesque cafes. We got some gelato (a daily necessity -- spumoni this time) before wandering back to the area of our accomodations. We found a cute restaurant for dinner that was full of local families and almost no tourists and once again ordered some wonderful pasta and espresso.

Early Saturday morning we got up and out and on a bus to Campo dei Fiori, a gorgeous hidden piazza that is filled with produce stands in the morning. Drew said he felt like he was walking in a giant salad, but it was so colorful and fresh. From there we walked to the Vatican City and saw St. Peter's Basilica and the Vatican Museums. We entered the basilica through the tombs of the popes, so we emerged from the basement into the center largest, grandest church in all of Europe. There are really no words to describe this building and its ornamentation, and myawe was only multiplied when I saw Michelangelo's Pieta, which the sculptor completed when he was only 25 years old. And then there were the Vatican Museums, which were huge and only partly seen. We headed immediately toward the Sistine Chapel, but the museum is set up in a way that you go through several impressive exhibits before you get there. Once you're there, you're suddenly surround by a couple of hundred people, all looking up as if their necks had been stuck that way. And once again, there are no words to describe the ceiling or the Last Judgment.

After the Vatican we hit the two other obligatory tourist attractions -- the Colosseum and the Palatine Hill. And they are obligatory for a reason. We chose a guided tour of the amphitheatre, which is incredibly impressive and was so advanced for its time. Palatine Hill is where the emperors of Rome built their palaces overlooking the whole city. And as you can see from the picture at the top of this post, you really can see the whole city. From the palaces we wandered down through the gardens and into the Roman Forum.

In order to make this really full day even longer, we jumped on the metro to the Spanish Steps and then walked to the Castel Sant'Angelo, which was built in second century and used as a fort, a castle, and a papal residence in times of conflict. The castle itself was interesting but not all that great, but the view from the top was breathtaking, especially at night with all of Rome lit up. This picture is of the Tiber River and the reflection of the bridge. We had a panoramic view of the entire city, and it made it completely worth the 8 euro it cost us to get in.

We had skipped lunch that day in order to get in all we could possibly see, so by 8 p.m. we were naturally about ready to gnaw off our own arms. We took possibly the scariest taxi ride of my life (Italian traffic rules are really more like guidelines), and stopped at an area our tourguide had recommended for food. After wandering around and checking several menus, we decided on a tiny place on an even tiny-er piazza, the name of which I don't even know. The piazza had a fountain (so it was official), and the restaurant had most of its seating outside. We had an amazing meal with antipasto (prociutto and wonderful mozzerella di buffalo), wine, pasta and of course, espresso. Our waiter was great, and I'm pretty sure we were the only non-Italians in there, which made for a perfect atmosphere. One post-dinner stop for gelato (banana), and we were sufficiently worn out for the day.

Sunday morning Drew caught an early flight so he could be back in London for the Super Bowl, and Robyn and I spent most of the day wandering around the less touristed areas of the city. We went to the Piazza del Popolo and up to the Pincio Gardens, which gave us the view pictured at left. It was early, before mass had started for most people, and there were joggers and walkers all over the place. We took the Del Corso road into town and passed tons of couples and families out for their Sunday stroll. We visited the National Pasta Museum, which was rather disappointing, but we made up for it by getting the best pizza and sandwiches for lunch. We ate them on the steps of another church, sitting in the sun and watching the piazza full of pigeons and dogs. I discovered a new favorite food as well. Suppli are balls of risotto, mixed with a little bit of tomato sauce and wrapped around a chunk of mozzerella cheese. The whole thing is then breaded and fried like a cheese stick or a hush puppy, and they are so so good -- even cold.

Then we found my favorite church in all of Rome. We wound our way through Trastevare, a particularly picturesque area of town with cute shops and cafes. When I think of Italy, I picture this area. We found ourselves in the Piazza de Santa Maria en Trastevare, which has a gorgeous fountain and was filled with so many young adults, just come out of mass and all carrying Gerber daisies (I have yet to figure out why -- I think it must have something to do with Carnivale). The church they had just come out of, and for which the piazza is named, was the first official place of Christian worship to be built in Rome. And while it is not the largest or most grandiose of the churches we saw, it is definitely my favorite. Because it was smaller, and because it was in a residential area, it felt more like a real, lived-in church and less like a museum. And it was no less breathtaking for it.

Some more wandering brought us to the island in the middle of the Tiber River, the oldest bridge in Rome and the Piazza del Reppublica. By about 3 p.m. both Robyn and I were too tired to function any longer, so we spent much of the afternoon sitting around and simply absorbing Rome. We finally got home, after a rather long and tedious trip, at about 3 a.m. -- at which time I fell into bed and slept until noon the next day.

So it was a wonderful weekend, and this week has been rather boring by comparison. I'm not traveling this weekend, which is good because I have a lot of school work to do, but there will be a trip to Scotland the following weekend and Spring Break the weekend after that.

I will try to get links into this post in the next couple of days (as well as correct any misspelled Italian words), and I will put up some additional pictures on Flickr as well. In the meantime, Drew has his much more professional photos posted on his Web site, so I hope you will enjoy those. (Note: There are two pages of Friday pictures and four pages of Saturday pictures, which is not immediately obvious but can be navigated through links at the top of the page.)

In other news I would like to congratulate my boys in blue for a fantastic win over Duke last night. Tonight I'm going to a barbecue resaturant in Soho tonight to watch the game on ESPN Orbit so I can see just how impressive it was. Also, it was snowing this morning when I got up. It was pretty and kinda exciting, even though most of it had turned to slush before I left the house.

Cheers!