Happy Fourth, everyone! Would you believe that I forgot it was the Fourth until I got home a few minutes ago? At home, it's one of my favorite holidays. There will be no fireworks or cooking out tonight, but I'm not too crushed; I'm having a decent day so far! This morning, I returned to St. Peter's with my roommate for the 10:30 Latin Mass. I'm still having trouble getting the gist of the readings in Italian, but I did well understanding the homily, once I realized that the priest was talking about lambs (agnelli) and not angels (angeli). Afterward, we climbed the 521 steps to the top of the cupola to see the stunning view of Rome, including all of Vatican City and its impressive gardens. The only unpleasant part was the huge crowd of hot, sweaty bodies packed into the cupola -- it's about a thousand degrees here, and it seems impossible to stop sweating, both indoors and out. Which is not a complaint -- instead, it makes a handy excuse to have gelato for lunch, as I've just done.
I'm happy to report that my feet have made a full recovery from Tuesday's sea urchin encounter, which is a good thing, because we've done a ton of tramping around the hills and mountains in the past couple of days. Friday, we made a trip to Praeneste to see the remains of the huge sanctuary of Fortuna. Praeneste sits in a beautiful hilly spot about 40 km east of Rome, and it is well worth a trip to see the sanctuary's remains. It is almost unfathomably large, especially considering the limitations of ancient construction methods. It took a pretty monumental effort just to climb up the huge hill into which the multi-tiered sanctuary is built -- Roman construction workers must have been seriously macho! When we got back to Rome in the afternoon, we went to the American Academy to see some select pieces from the ancient coin collection there, and even better, we got to climb down a manhole embedded in the basement floor of the Academy and descend into an underground tunnel that was part of the Aqua Traiana aqueduct. It runs right under the building, and its route is marked in a gold line on the basement floor. I was a little nervous about climbing down the rickety ladder into the hole, but did I really want to be the girl who passed up the chance to walk in an aqueduct? Forget it.
Yesterday was maybe our best so far: we drove a couple hours east in to the heart of the Appenine Mountains, with a stop en route at "Horace's Villa" outside of Licenza, to the site of the Roman colony of Alba Fucens. The mountains are unlike any I've seen before: the landscape around is pretty arid, although plenty of pine trees and wildflowers, including poppies, grow all around, yet the mountains are tall enough that if you look closely you can see little specks of snow on top. Sitting outside of an old church eating our sack lunches and looking out on the scene, I found myself thinking about how incredible it was that any type of communication was possible between Rome and outlying areas like this -- travel would not have been easy! Our director had deliberately avoided assigning us any reading about Alba Fucens before our visit, because our project for the afternoon was dividing up into groups and examining individual portions of the town, sight unseen, to see what we could tell about them. With four other women, I worked on what we successfully identified as a large villa constructed in several different phases. It turns out we've learned a lot in a week: we can identify quite a few different types of masonry, concrete facing, etc. that began at different periods, so we can take a well-educated stab at dating the different features of a site. The exercise was one of the most fun and interesting parts of our program yet -- I felt like a real-life detective, and it was really satisfying to put my new knowledge to work and see our site as much more than a pile of rubble.
I would never write a whole post without gushing about Italian food, so I'd better give a recap of this week's culinary highlights before signing off. First, I don't think I've written about the wonders of Italian pizza. Prior to this trip, my Italian pizza experience had been confined to Naples, the birthplace of pizza, where I twice ate an entire pizza by myself because it was really the only safe thing for a young woman traveling alone in the city to do. There, the pizza was delivered straight from wood-fired oven to table, and the toppings almost slid off the hot, ultra-thin crust. Here in Rome, I'm discovering for the first time pizza as a quick on-the-go lunch, something different altogether. Almost on every corner, you can find a pizzeria that has a variety of large, oval-shaped pizzas on display. To order, you tell the person behind the counter which one you want, and he poises a pair of scissors or a knife over the pizza and waits for you to tell him to adjust it -- forward for a wider strip, back for a thinner one. Then he cuts it off, throws it into the oven for a couple of minutes, and when it comes out, he cuts it in two, puts one face-down on top of the other, and wraps the resulting pizza sandwich up burrito-style, with one end sticking out of the package. Voila -- pizza to go. We're lucky to have an especially good pizzeria just a couple blocks up from the Centro, Pizzeria Simone, where I've had a delicious porcini mushroom and tomato-and-mozzarella varieties. The best pizza I've had so far, however, I got at Pizzeria Florida near the Largo Argentina on Wednesday. Gorgonzola-mozzarella-salami! Delicious. Take out never tasted so good.
But that's just lunch. We've had a few dinner highlights here at the Centro this week that I can't pass over. Favorite primo, or first course (normally) a pasta or risotto): zucchini-and-almond pesto over twisted tube-shaped noodles. Favorite contorno, or side dish: prepared fresh artichokes -- I'm not sure quite how they were done, except that it involved olive oil (obviously) and probably some sort of vinegar, but they were just incredibly fresh and delicious. Favorite secondo: surprisingly, fried calimari. While the squid I had in the risotto-of-doom my first night in Rome was cooked to perfection and not the least bit rubbery, this slightly rubbery fried version won points for being done up like onion rings -- you can't really go wrong there.
Finally (and I realize this is getting a bit excessive) I have to describe the show-stopping dinner that Heidi and I had last night. We got a recommendation for Osteria Ponte Sisto from my friend Kristin, who lived in Rome for a year while she was studying. Our review of her choice: as Heidi put it, "Kristin is my new best friend." The charming and unendingly patient waiters recommended to us several seafood dishes that might not normally have been my first choices, but we were glad we followed their advice. After a really refreshing antipasto of thinly sliced whitefish on a big mound of greens and topped with orange slices, we split two different seafood pasta dishes, one with a variety of seafood and the other with artichokes and fresh tuna. After dessert, a millefeuille -- literally, a thousand-leafed cake -- with the most delicate whipped cream and chocolate sauce, the waiter brought us not one, but two rounds of a warm Sicilian almond liqueur on the house, and very kindly recommended to Heidi restaurants she could try on her upcoming visit to his native Naples. I'm always so grateful to waiters who go out of their way to be pleasant to tourists with horrendous Italian (referring to myself here) -- I understand that we're kind of a pain, and they see thousands of us. I've run into so many warm, welcoming Italians here, and I find their generosity really inspiring.
And that concludes this week's episode of my Italian food epic. I hope I haven't bored you -- I have to say, reliving my innumerable wonderful gastronomic experiences does not get old for me!
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