Welcome to Italy, BB and MR! I am a little out of date here, since these two lovely ladies are in fact already back in Texas... blogging is like a constant game of catch-up.
(For the last time we were in Rome, including more pics of the Colosseum, St. Peter's, and the Trevi Fountain, look here and here.)
I whisked myself off to Rome last weekend on the Eurostar train to meet BB and MR, two women who worked with me back in Austin, at the Spanish Steps. I noticed on the Metropolitana on the way from Termini to Spagna that I was surrounded by people wearing bright red T-shirts with the word "BRAINS" emblazoned across the front. A zombie cartel?
No, as it turned out - Welsh in town for a rugby match between Italy and Wales. (Italy would go on to win that evening.)
I sat on the raised platform at the bottom of the steps, surrounding a fountain of a sinking ship, waiting. Suddenly, hands clamped down on my shoulders and I was being hugged - The Texas Ladies had arrived in Rome!
They were in for a whirlwind tour of Rome. Unfortunately, I'm not nearly as familiar with that city as I am our adopted home of Florence, which led to a tense standoff with a Floridian we met near Trajan's Column. (MR jokingly called me their "guide," and this woman got really upset with me when I didn't know the location of a particular prison for which she was looking.)
However, I was able to take them to the Colosseum, where we learned an awful lot about Roman culture and history.
We also found the Pantheon, which, when we were there, was being taken over by a group of people inexplicably chanting "Singin' in the Rain" while doing a stylized call and response in English. And wearing togas, of course. ?
Update: The Pantheon is still my favorite building in Rome. I showed the ladies where Brunelleschi was allowed to cut a chunk out of the dome while he was trying to design the Duomo here in Florence, and this time we even found the drainage holes scattered around the floor for when rain comes in through the round sunlight high above.
We strolled through Piazza Navona, where Bernini's Four Rivers fountain is unfortunately under scaffolding. Lots of people were out, enjoying the first days of lovely spring weather. La Dolce Vita is right.
This flood marker caught my eye. They're all over the place here in Florence, but I didn't realize the Tiber jumped its banks on occasion, too.
But, the sight we visited that I think we all enjoyed the most was Vatican City. I had been here during the summer of 2001, but the Sistine Chapel has been restored since then so I was really looking forward to seeing the now brightened colors.
We got there on Monday morning and saw a line snaking away from the door, around the corner. Gulp. We rounded the corner, but the line kept going. Another corner. And another. After walking almost all the way around the Vatican walls to St. Peter's, we finally found the end of the line.
An earnest young blonde walked up to us with a clipboard, saying that the line was 2 hours long. "But we have a guide twenty minutes from the front!"
Meh. We're hardcore, we'll wait it out!
As it turned out, we were glad we did! The line moved the whole time, and it only took an hour for us to make our way to the front. No thanks to the line-jumpers.
Of course, the inside was PACKED.
This didn't really affect our enjoyment too much. The Vatican Museums are beautiful, jammed full of interesting artifacts from all over the world. There are actually something like 12 separate museums under the banner of the Vatican, from Egyptian to Renaissance. And it's all housed in stunningly decorated hallways built on the grandest of scales.
I really enjoyed some of the sculpture we saw. There were enormous showpieces, but the smaller ones were what really caught my eye. Beware of Monkey.
I felt sorry for this poor bird. Nobody deserves to be sat on by a fat baby eating grapes.
There were so many beautiful details. How does one move a mosaic? I guess the easy answer is "carefully."
And every once in a while, a view just stopped me, causing whatever tour group was currently shuffling along behind me to run into each other.
I think the museum I enjoyed the most was the map museum. The walls of the long hallway had been painted in the mid 1600s with current geographical knowledge of the regions surrounding the Vatican - in other words, modern Italy.
I found Sicily and Calabria and Liguria, but one region really stood out. Etruria.
Better known today as Tuscany. There was a small inset map of Fiorenza, too.
Soon enough, though, you find yourself wedged into smaller and smaller hallways, which are ugly and claustrophobic. Warning signs abound - don't dance your way down these stairs, people.
And then, a door is in front of you, and you are through... and there is a large rectangular room teeming with people, being watched over by three or four testy security guards who keep clapping and yelling "NO FOTO!"
And you realize you're in the Sistine Chapel.
I am a bad person. Though pictures are prohibited, I took a couple. Without flash, of course - I'm not a Neanderthal! But one guy nearly blinded me when his flash went off in my face.
The Chapel is amazing. Full of people and paint and beauty, it's really hard to take everything in at once. There's the famous ceiling, of course, but then there are frescoes all around the walls by artists amazing in their own right, like Botticelli, Perugino, and Ghirlandaio.
The rest of the museums really pale in comparison. We worked our way back to where we could return our audio guides, and then discovered that the fastest way to St. Peter's Basilica was to go back through the Sistine Chapel. We fought our way back against the crowds and had the opportunity to see the Sistine Chapel one more time. Then, St. Peter's.
I have better (and more) pictures from our last visit, so suffice it to say that the Basilica is still enormous and stuffed with riches.
Of course, being in Rome wasn't just museums and churches. We also had some terrific food, with the exception of one meal. About that meal, I'll just say - what is it with the damn CORN on every salad?
We did also have some really good food, including Carciofi alla Romana (Roman-style artichokes) - mrinated in mint with lots of yummy olive oil,
as well as Saltimbocca alla Romana, that more-than-good veal/sage/prosciutto dish with lemon-butter sauce so famous in Rome. (We've had this before in Rome.)
We also, in a little sidewalk cafe just two blocks or so from the Pantheon, had a really nice meal (with great Tuscan salumi, of course?), followed by the best dessert I've had in a restaurant in a while - a gooey chocolate cake with ginger sauce. Rich, but with three people sharing it we had just the right amount.
The three of us had a great time in Rome, though we did have to share two twin beds... sleep's overrated, if you ask me. (No, it worked out fine, really.) On Monday, we came back to Florence, where the ladies stayed for just a couple of days before their visit to Venice. Just about all of my Florence pictures involve food, so perhaps I'll write a post about that after Spring Break.
Yup - Spring Break! No big plans for this break, certianly not Egypt or Southern Italy - but we are planning to go to Elba. I'm excited to see where Napoleon was exiled... the first time. So, no more posts until the end of the week, though I guess that's not really different from normal operating procedure.
