Summer has come late to Rome, but it's finally here. We've had a couple of very long days out in the sun yesterday and today. Yesterday, we headed out of town to explore the sites of the ancient Etruscan city of Veii, famously sacked by the Romans in 396 B.C., and the Roman colony of Cosa, a couple hours North of Rome, perched on a high hill right on the edge of the Tyrrhenian. The sun was beating down hard as we wandered through the ruins, but luckily, a remedy was close at hand: the beach! After we finished our coursework for the day, we headed to the beach at Tarquinia for a quick dip before our bus ride back to Rome.
Not so luckily, I discovered that we were sharing the beach with a pesky little creature called a riccio di mare -- sea urchin. While I was out swimming in water just a little above my head, I touched the front of my feet briefly against what felt like a big prickly rock. Apparently, it was a rock, but it must also have had some ricci perched on it, who promptly ejected a bunch of their spines into my feet. When I came out, I found that I had a smattering of blackish-purple little dots covering the front of my feet and toes. Ouch! I haven't had much success extracting them yet, but I have a hot tip from the owner of the Centro that rubbing some olive oil on my feet might help to ease them out. I knew olive oil was essential to Italian cooking, but it appears that it may be useful in Mediterranean medicine as well.
Anyway, not to worry, I've been getting around fine today as we've been studying Republican temples in the centro storico. Our fortitude was rather challenged this afternoon by a long museum tour after quite a few hours in the sun, whose highlights included a viewing of the famous Hellenistic bronze statue of a curly-haired boy, nicknamed Il Spinario, who is represented picking a thorn out of his foot. I, la spinaria, was very happy to get out of the sun and back to Monteverde, where I cooled off with a tiramisu and frutti di bosco -- forest fruit -- gelato from our neighborhood gelateria.
I haven't updated yet about the weekend, which was wonderful. We finished a half day at the Villa Giulia in gigantic Villa Borghese Park at about noon on Saturday, and from there I set out to get to know my way around the city center. Over the course of my three-hour meandering walk home, I walked down the Via del Corso, a major shopping street leading down to the Piazza Navona, and then cut over to the Pantheon. It was my first time there, and I found it every bit as impressive as I'd hoped it would be. My fascination with Roman engineering continues to grow as I learn more about the particulars and challenges of their building techniques. From the Pantheon, I wandered west to the Piazza Navona and South to the Campo di Fiori, where Gail and Em and I stayed in 2006. My stroll through included a stop at the mind-blowing bakery just off Corso Vittorio Emmanuele, which serves an amazing array of cookies, pastries, and breads. I picked out a little donut-shaped cookie called a ciambellina (ciambella = donut) made with red wine and almonds, and another powdered-sugar dusted shortbread cookie flavored with orange. I will definitely be making multiple return trips there! Finally, I walked through the Jewish Ghetto (which also boasts a wonderful bakery, I hear, to be visited in due course!) and across the Tiber back home. I'm getting much more comfortable navigating around Rome, and I try to explore someplace new every day.
On Sunday, I had a cappuccino and brioche at the bar down the street and then headed North to Mass at St. Peter's! It was a relatively short and very scenic walk through a park overlooking the city and down the Janiculum. It was really a magical experience, looking out over the city and hearing church bells ringing from every quarter. I was surprised to find an enormous crowd of tourists in St. Peter's Square even at a relatively early hour, and I was nervous about being late for Mass because I had to go through an extensive maze of security. I got in, however, in plenty of time for the 10:30 Latin Mass. It was a really awesome experience, in the literal sense of the word, to feel the tradition of the faith, the place and the language all around, and to participate in the Mass with people from countless different countries.
After church, I scurried home to catch a bus to go over to go have lunch with my friend Roberta, who had offered to cook for me at her apartment. With typical Italian nonchalance, she whipped up some really excellent zucchini-and-pepper pasta, a frittata, and a platter of vegetables with mozzarella. Afterwards, she took me to see her church, and we discovered -- oh, happy coincidence! -- that a gelateria I'd read about and been dying to try was only a couple of blocks away. The gelato at Fatamorgana is everything David Lebowitz promised -- there were about 50 enticing and completely unexpected flavors to choose from, and Roby pronounced it on a par with the gelato at her favorite place in Sicily. After much deliberation, I chose 3 flavors: chocolate and tobacco; honey, ricotta and coconut; and white chocolate and pine nut. I'd been especially eager to try the first, which Lebowitz had raved about, and bizarre as it sounds, it was unbelievably delicious -- you would never have guessed it contained tobacco, of all things, and it was wonderfully rich and smooth. I, in turn, have been raving about Fatamorgana to friends at the Centro, and I'm sure we'll be back a time or two over the course of the summer!
Roby and I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering through the lovely Villa Ada park before I had to head back. Believe it or not, I was starving by the time I got home, and luckily, my friend Heidi was up for getting some dinner in Trastevere. We ate at a fashionably Roman hour, about 9, and lingered for hours on the warm patio on a pleasantly bustling little square. I could go on for hours about the food, but I'll restrain myself for now; thinking about food seems to claim about half of my mental energy each day, and I should really probably go focus on something archaeologically-related before I turn into a total glutton. That is, in the half hour before it's time for dinner, and that mushroom risotto I've been looking forward to all day...
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Friday, June 25, 2010
Benvenuto a Roma!
I'm nearing the end of my first week in Rome already. You know the feeling of awkwardness that comes with being in a new place, with a new group of people? The one that accompanies the first days at a new school, working a new job, or living in a new city? I'm always impatient with that feeling, and I'm happy that after just a few days here, I and the other students in the program are comfortable with each other and our environment and thoroughly engaged in our daily explorations.
I'm living at the International Collegiate Center for Classical Studies in the Monteverde neighborhood of Rome, high atop the Janiculum Hill on the western side of Rome. It's a prime location: an easy half-hour's walk East across the Tiber to the Roman Forum, and (it appears to me) an equidistant walk to the Vatican. All 25 of us students are living here, sharing two delicious meals a day cooked in-house. It seems that we're eating about twice as much as the average Italian, thanks to the kitchen's advantageous blending of American and Italian mealtime customs. They know from plenty of experience, I'm sure, that American students can't be satisfied by the scant Italian breakfast of a measly biscotto and coffee, so we get a full-on American breakfast each morning, with a copious range of cereals, fruit, yogurt, a hot item, and plenty of industrial-strength coffee to stuff ourselves on. At dinner time, though, thankfully, we do things the Italian way: every night, we have a pasta dish to start; a salad between courses; a meat dish and vegetable; and, finally, dessert and coffee to finish. It's a schedule I could definitely get used to but probably shouldn't!
Between the feasts that bookend my days, I've been soaking up a huge amount of information on and first-hand exposure to archaic and Republican history, archaeology, art and architecture this week. We had a couple of half-days early in the week to break us in, and today and yesterday have been full days on site outside of Rome. I've gotten well oriented to the topography of Rome. One of my favorite lessons of the week: you can remember the names and locations of Rome's seven hills by starting with the Capitoline in the Northwest and moving clockwise according to the following pneumonic phrase: Can Queen Victoria Eat Cold Apple Pie? Capitoline, Quirinal, Viminal, Esquiline, Caelian, Appenine, Palatine. I've used that trick a hundred times this week already. I'm getting to know in-depth many of the important monuments in Rome, too. We've had on-site introductions by prominent archaeologists to the San' Omobono temple complex in the Forum Boarium and the Regia in the Roman Forum, and I'm beginning to piece together in my head the development of the city center from its earliest days. Yesterday and today, we've gone farther afield to learn more about Rome's early neighbors, the Etruscans and the Latins. Yesterday, we explored tomb complexes at Tarquinia and Cerveteri, and today we saw temple sites at Lavinium (the city Aeneas is said to have founded) and Tusculum. Imagine descending into enormous chamber tombs, some of them from the 7th century B.C., and seeing firsthand the richly colored, elaborate paintings on the walls (Tarquinia) and walking around the rooms where sarcophagi of entire families were arranged along with hoards of luxurious grave-goods (Cerveteri). As the name "necropolis" suggests, the experience of walking around these sites is like wandering around an ancient city: the tomb constructors have gone to incredible lengths to make their tombs resemble homes of the living, and (especially at Cerveteri) they are laid as in a real city, even to the extent of featuring fantastic mansion-style tombs alongside condominium-style smaller tombs arranged neatly and economically alongside the roads for the less well-off. Today's sites were less immediately evocative -- although they certainly gained something from their lush setting in the Alban Hills -- but I found myself surprisingly enthralled by the technical details of their construction. The highlight of my day today was a lecture on the Romans' development and use of concrete. Maybe I've got something of an engineer in me after all.
Apart from the main facts of life here -- accommodation and the program itself -- I've had a couple of added social bonuses this week. First, serendipitously, it turns out that a friendly acquaintance from Brown is also staying at the Centro supervising a different program. We've taken up running together in the mornings when possible, and now I have another friend to explore the city with in my down time. Second, another friend from my Bristol days, an Italian, is currently studying in Rome, and she came to visit me here in Monteverde the other day. I'm hoping I'll see more of her in the coming week before she heads back to Sicily for the summer.
It's impossible to report fully or to do justice to my experiences here, and I feel the deficiency of my account especially keenly because it's Italy we're talking about here -- Italy is a place to be felt, tasted, heard, and not really to be committed to a page in black and white. There's no way I can adequately describe a cool breeze wafting off the Tyrrhenian Sea felt on an Tuscan hilltop; the savor of risotto dyed pitch black with squid ink (eaten at a nearby Sicilian restaurant on my first night here) or wild boar and hare (local specialties I've tried at lunch on our day trips); or the sound of goats bleating loudly in the Alban Hills in competition with a professor lecturing on an ancient amphitheatre. Italy is also, of course, to be seen, and to share that aspect with you as best I can, I've posted a batch of my pictures. Enjoy!
I'm living at the International Collegiate Center for Classical Studies in the Monteverde neighborhood of Rome, high atop the Janiculum Hill on the western side of Rome. It's a prime location: an easy half-hour's walk East across the Tiber to the Roman Forum, and (it appears to me) an equidistant walk to the Vatican. All 25 of us students are living here, sharing two delicious meals a day cooked in-house. It seems that we're eating about twice as much as the average Italian, thanks to the kitchen's advantageous blending of American and Italian mealtime customs. They know from plenty of experience, I'm sure, that American students can't be satisfied by the scant Italian breakfast of a measly biscotto and coffee, so we get a full-on American breakfast each morning, with a copious range of cereals, fruit, yogurt, a hot item, and plenty of industrial-strength coffee to stuff ourselves on. At dinner time, though, thankfully, we do things the Italian way: every night, we have a pasta dish to start; a salad between courses; a meat dish and vegetable; and, finally, dessert and coffee to finish. It's a schedule I could definitely get used to but probably shouldn't!
Between the feasts that bookend my days, I've been soaking up a huge amount of information on and first-hand exposure to archaic and Republican history, archaeology, art and architecture this week. We had a couple of half-days early in the week to break us in, and today and yesterday have been full days on site outside of Rome. I've gotten well oriented to the topography of Rome. One of my favorite lessons of the week: you can remember the names and locations of Rome's seven hills by starting with the Capitoline in the Northwest and moving clockwise according to the following pneumonic phrase: Can Queen Victoria Eat Cold Apple Pie? Capitoline, Quirinal, Viminal, Esquiline, Caelian, Appenine, Palatine. I've used that trick a hundred times this week already. I'm getting to know in-depth many of the important monuments in Rome, too. We've had on-site introductions by prominent archaeologists to the San' Omobono temple complex in the Forum Boarium and the Regia in the Roman Forum, and I'm beginning to piece together in my head the development of the city center from its earliest days. Yesterday and today, we've gone farther afield to learn more about Rome's early neighbors, the Etruscans and the Latins. Yesterday, we explored tomb complexes at Tarquinia and Cerveteri, and today we saw temple sites at Lavinium (the city Aeneas is said to have founded) and Tusculum. Imagine descending into enormous chamber tombs, some of them from the 7th century B.C., and seeing firsthand the richly colored, elaborate paintings on the walls (Tarquinia) and walking around the rooms where sarcophagi of entire families were arranged along with hoards of luxurious grave-goods (Cerveteri). As the name "necropolis" suggests, the experience of walking around these sites is like wandering around an ancient city: the tomb constructors have gone to incredible lengths to make their tombs resemble homes of the living, and (especially at Cerveteri) they are laid as in a real city, even to the extent of featuring fantastic mansion-style tombs alongside condominium-style smaller tombs arranged neatly and economically alongside the roads for the less well-off. Today's sites were less immediately evocative -- although they certainly gained something from their lush setting in the Alban Hills -- but I found myself surprisingly enthralled by the technical details of their construction. The highlight of my day today was a lecture on the Romans' development and use of concrete. Maybe I've got something of an engineer in me after all.
Apart from the main facts of life here -- accommodation and the program itself -- I've had a couple of added social bonuses this week. First, serendipitously, it turns out that a friendly acquaintance from Brown is also staying at the Centro supervising a different program. We've taken up running together in the mornings when possible, and now I have another friend to explore the city with in my down time. Second, another friend from my Bristol days, an Italian, is currently studying in Rome, and she came to visit me here in Monteverde the other day. I'm hoping I'll see more of her in the coming week before she heads back to Sicily for the summer.
It's impossible to report fully or to do justice to my experiences here, and I feel the deficiency of my account especially keenly because it's Italy we're talking about here -- Italy is a place to be felt, tasted, heard, and not really to be committed to a page in black and white. There's no way I can adequately describe a cool breeze wafting off the Tyrrhenian Sea felt on an Tuscan hilltop; the savor of risotto dyed pitch black with squid ink (eaten at a nearby Sicilian restaurant on my first night here) or wild boar and hare (local specialties I've tried at lunch on our day trips); or the sound of goats bleating loudly in the Alban Hills in competition with a professor lecturing on an ancient amphitheatre. Italy is also, of course, to be seen, and to share that aspect with you as best I can, I've posted a batch of my pictures. Enjoy!
 |
| Rome: Week 1 |
Sunday, June 20, 2010
120 hours in the U.K.
First: I'm in Rome! I arrived yesterday afternoon from Heathrow and am now cozily settled into a double room in the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in the Monteverde neighborhood. Teaser: what's black, full of squid, and consumed by me on my first night in the city? Stay tuned to find out. But now, I'll recap my fast-and-furious five-day "layover" in the U.K.
Tuesday, June 15
London. Landed at 11:30. Checked into a hostel on Euston Road at 1:45. Mustered, with great difficulty, all of my patience and regard for proper hygiene and spent half an hour or so changing clothes and freshening up. What a waste, spending 30 precious minutes in a hostel bathroom, when I could be out exploring the city! But soon enough, I was legging it down Judd Street towards Bloomsbury, on a mission to see as much as possible before meeting chaplaincy friends for dinner. I should have been tired, but London keeps me perpetually exhilarated. I've found myself there at the beginning of many adventures, and no matter how many times I stroll through Russell Square or past the British Museum, I still feel like it's my first time and I'm out to discover the world.
Bloomsbury, Covent Garden, Trafalgar Square, Whitehall, Westminster, St. James Park, Green Park, check, check, check. Soon it was time to meet my Bristolian Catholic friends. I met Sem, James, and Chrys in the Leicester Square tube station. Lucky, incredibly lucky me to get to spend time with them again. We went to a great little restaurant in Chinatown and then wandered over to Covent Garden for dessert. It was still light when we finished -- a perk of summers in Britain -- and we strolled down to Trafalgar Square and Whitehall, torturing James by taking tons of pictures, until we had to split up.
Wednesday, June 16 - Friday, June 18
9 a.m., off on the train to Edinburgh! I had the presence of mind to take some pictures on the way up the East Coast this time, and I'm pleased with how well they turned out. No matter how many times I take trains in Britain -- or anywhere, really, although the scenery is better on the way to the 'Burgh than to Boston -- the novelty does not wear off. I just find train stations and train rides absolutely magical. The view of the great old cities -- York, Newcastle, Berwick-upon-Tweed -- and of the Eastern sea coast on the way up to Scotland is second to none.
I could go on for ages about the utter joy of being back in Scotland, but I'll save the gushing in the interest of ever getting on to tell you about Rome. For now, suffice it to say that I had two blissful days of wandering the city and catching up with old friends in the best possible -- and most uncharacteristic -- weather: almost pure sunshine and temperatures in the '70s. Highlights: the obligatory, exuberant run/hike through Holyrood Park and up Arthur's Seat; a scrumptious Scottish breakfast complete with haggis; a sunny walk up Calton Hill with Lauren for a view of the city; a long and leisurely tea and catch-up with Sarah, my favorite ex-flattie; a BBQ at the CSU with some of the old characters; another (how lucky can I get?) date with Sarah for brunch before I caught my train on Thursday morning.
Even with so much to look forward to in the coming weeks, I hated to leave Scotland! I was back down in London by dinnertime on Friday, though, where I stayed for the first time in a hostel in Kensington. Until Friday night, I had lived in indifference to the World Cup, but that all changed when I went out for dinner with an unfortunately ill-timed craving for some good pub grub. After the better part of an hour spent scouring central London for a pub with a single free seat -- during the England game, I realized the next morning -- I gave up the quest as impossible and settled for some noodles in Chinatown. Not a bad alternative.
Saturday, June 19
I got an early start and walked through Hyde Park to explore the Portobello Road Market, which has its famous antiques market open on Saturday. It was pleasantly swarmed with people and a zillion different interesting things to see. Most exciting of all: the fantastic food market on the north end of the strip, featuring everything from pastries (I bought an apple strudel for a, um, second breakfast) to fruit and veg and all sorts of ethnic foods.
Lunchtime: off to Bristol to meet friends from my M.A.! Again, it was really exhilarating to be back in the city for the first time since I left. The weather cooperated again, turning from rather gloomy to warm and sunny just as I arrived. A friend met me at the bus stop, and we proceeded on a proper little pub crawl through Clifton as more girls met up with us one by one. We all had dinner at an Indian place together, and then a couple friends walked with me out over the Clifton Suspension Bridge where I frantically took pictures in the beautiful dusky light and strove to stash away the memory as purely as possible. It was great to get to catch up with a whole group of old friends and to revisit another of my favorite cities in the world.
Sunday, June 21
Bright and early, off to Rome from Heathrow! Time for the main event to commence. Have you ever witnessed the Italian method of disembarking from a plane? Total stampede -- you have to see it to believe it. Whatever happened to the civilized British queue? I've swapped cultures, to be sure, but I'm happy to report that I'm adjusting to my new environment just fine!
Belated addendum: You can find pictures from my UK trip here!
Tuesday, June 15
London. Landed at 11:30. Checked into a hostel on Euston Road at 1:45. Mustered, with great difficulty, all of my patience and regard for proper hygiene and spent half an hour or so changing clothes and freshening up. What a waste, spending 30 precious minutes in a hostel bathroom, when I could be out exploring the city! But soon enough, I was legging it down Judd Street towards Bloomsbury, on a mission to see as much as possible before meeting chaplaincy friends for dinner. I should have been tired, but London keeps me perpetually exhilarated. I've found myself there at the beginning of many adventures, and no matter how many times I stroll through Russell Square or past the British Museum, I still feel like it's my first time and I'm out to discover the world.
Bloomsbury, Covent Garden, Trafalgar Square, Whitehall, Westminster, St. James Park, Green Park, check, check, check. Soon it was time to meet my Bristolian Catholic friends. I met Sem, James, and Chrys in the Leicester Square tube station. Lucky, incredibly lucky me to get to spend time with them again. We went to a great little restaurant in Chinatown and then wandered over to Covent Garden for dessert. It was still light when we finished -- a perk of summers in Britain -- and we strolled down to Trafalgar Square and Whitehall, torturing James by taking tons of pictures, until we had to split up.
Wednesday, June 16 - Friday, June 18
9 a.m., off on the train to Edinburgh! I had the presence of mind to take some pictures on the way up the East Coast this time, and I'm pleased with how well they turned out. No matter how many times I take trains in Britain -- or anywhere, really, although the scenery is better on the way to the 'Burgh than to Boston -- the novelty does not wear off. I just find train stations and train rides absolutely magical. The view of the great old cities -- York, Newcastle, Berwick-upon-Tweed -- and of the Eastern sea coast on the way up to Scotland is second to none.
I could go on for ages about the utter joy of being back in Scotland, but I'll save the gushing in the interest of ever getting on to tell you about Rome. For now, suffice it to say that I had two blissful days of wandering the city and catching up with old friends in the best possible -- and most uncharacteristic -- weather: almost pure sunshine and temperatures in the '70s. Highlights: the obligatory, exuberant run/hike through Holyrood Park and up Arthur's Seat; a scrumptious Scottish breakfast complete with haggis; a sunny walk up Calton Hill with Lauren for a view of the city; a long and leisurely tea and catch-up with Sarah, my favorite ex-flattie; a BBQ at the CSU with some of the old characters; another (how lucky can I get?) date with Sarah for brunch before I caught my train on Thursday morning.
Even with so much to look forward to in the coming weeks, I hated to leave Scotland! I was back down in London by dinnertime on Friday, though, where I stayed for the first time in a hostel in Kensington. Until Friday night, I had lived in indifference to the World Cup, but that all changed when I went out for dinner with an unfortunately ill-timed craving for some good pub grub. After the better part of an hour spent scouring central London for a pub with a single free seat -- during the England game, I realized the next morning -- I gave up the quest as impossible and settled for some noodles in Chinatown. Not a bad alternative.
Saturday, June 19
I got an early start and walked through Hyde Park to explore the Portobello Road Market, which has its famous antiques market open on Saturday. It was pleasantly swarmed with people and a zillion different interesting things to see. Most exciting of all: the fantastic food market on the north end of the strip, featuring everything from pastries (I bought an apple strudel for a, um, second breakfast) to fruit and veg and all sorts of ethnic foods.
Lunchtime: off to Bristol to meet friends from my M.A.! Again, it was really exhilarating to be back in the city for the first time since I left. The weather cooperated again, turning from rather gloomy to warm and sunny just as I arrived. A friend met me at the bus stop, and we proceeded on a proper little pub crawl through Clifton as more girls met up with us one by one. We all had dinner at an Indian place together, and then a couple friends walked with me out over the Clifton Suspension Bridge where I frantically took pictures in the beautiful dusky light and strove to stash away the memory as purely as possible. It was great to get to catch up with a whole group of old friends and to revisit another of my favorite cities in the world.
Sunday, June 21
Bright and early, off to Rome from Heathrow! Time for the main event to commence. Have you ever witnessed the Italian method of disembarking from a plane? Total stampede -- you have to see it to believe it. Whatever happened to the civilized British queue? I've swapped cultures, to be sure, but I'm happy to report that I'm adjusting to my new environment just fine!
Belated addendum: You can find pictures from my UK trip here!
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