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...
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