The one who got away…

My weekends here in Rome start on Thursdays and last until Sundays, and last weekend I jam packed those four days with fun! While most of my friends have class on Thursday (and no one has class on Friday),  my friend Shaili doesn’t have class until 5:00.  Shaili, like me, loves museums and history, so we have decided to make Thursdays a weekly museum visit day! This past Thursday, we began our museum adventure with the Capitoline Museum (on Capitoline Hill, one of the main 2 hills of Rome’s 7 hills). It was so much fun wandering amidst all the sculptures, fragments of monuments/monumental inscriptions, and even a Roman Temple of Jupiter. The two most famous pieces I saw, was Il Musico, a painting by Leonardo Da Vinci (his only remaining painting on wood), and the sculpture of the Lupa, Romulus and Remus, which is the symbol of Rome.

Lupa, with the medieval additions of Romulus and Remus

The capitoline museum had a fabulous view of the Roman forum!

 

The rest of the weekend I departed on a train adventure with two of my roommates to Pisa and Verona. Our train left Rome at 6:15, so we had to get up really early on Friday, and we arrived in Pisa at 10:30. Unfortunately, we discovered that in Pisa there is not much to do but take funny pictures around Pisa and then climb the tower. We had fun just hanging out and walking around the quaint little town, taking fun pictures, shopping and trying to stay warm (Northern Italy is quite cold at this time of the year, and we weren’t quite ready for it after the warmth of Rome!)

A jumping picture that worked!

a picture of all of the grounds around the leaning tower

a view from the top

It was scary, and very windy at the top of the tower of pisa!

what a pretty little chapel on the pretty little river, we were too cheap to pay the 3 euro to go in

just one example of some of the funny pictures we took. We happened upon this mural at the beginning of the day, and then continued to posters and pictures of it throughout Pisa, too bad my attempt to look like the blue man was sub-par.

To make our weekend more affordable we had the wonderful idea to take night trains between Pisa and Verona, and then again between Verona and Rome (and therefore we wouldn’t have to pay for a hostel!) While this idea seemed great in theory, its execution was… questionable, at best. What we hadn’t taken into account is that the train stations we would be stopped over at would not keep there waiting rooms open during the middle of the night- super brrrrr………..! Despite a cold with little sleep the tree of us had a blast in Verona! There was a beautiful amphitheater (tainted by a weird modern sculpture that made it look like a shooting star was coming out of it), some nice piazzas, a tall tower which gave us a view of both the quaint town and the alps, Juliette's house and finally we made our way to a gorgeous Romanesque Cathedral. Usually cathedrals aren’t really my thing, I think they are cool and all, they just always seem to have way to many things going on in them. But this cathedral (el duomo) seemed to flow together beautifully and had absolutely gorgeous rose-colored marble columns. We were so inspired we decided to stay for our first mass in Italy! After the mass, we headed to a restaurant which I had read about in my guide book that was supposed to have very regional meat dishes for cheap (after two weeks of cooking for myself, the only meat I’d had was some prosciutto on a sandwhich for lunch). Unfortunately, we forgot that many Italian restaurants stay open for lunch hours till about 3:00 and then don’t open again until after 7:00 for dinner! Sadly, I must admit that Virginia and I caved in and splurged on a meal at McDonalds to satisfy our need to meat. I tried a Italian Burger which was on Ciabatta bun, with a square hamburger patty and a slice of parmesan cheese on top- much better than a burger back home!

the amphitheater with the ugly sculpture thing coming out of it

two view from the top of the tower in verona, though the tower wasn't much to look at the view was far superior to the leaning tower

Juliette's house is the major destination of this town in Rome but most people only stopped by to take a picture with this statue of her. Everyone before touched her breast for their picture, being confused Americans we took normal pictures with her, were informed by an Italian with a lot of gesturing and broken English that because we didn't we hadn't received good fortune from Juliette in our love lives (what I don't get is why I would want her luck in love- Romeo and Juliette is a tragedy, isn't it?)

Me standing on Juliette's Balcony

The apse of el duomo

This past week was notable for two reasons:

1)     1) I saw the pope!!!!! As I was walking back to my apartment on Tuesday, through the tunnel which is usually flooded with the sound of cars whizzing by, I suddenly realized that not only was it quite in the tunnel, there were absolutely no cars passing through it! To spark my curiosity more, at even intervals three police motorcycles went speeding pass. Shortly after, as I approached the end of the tunnel I saw a motorcade pull out of the Vatican City. As it passed me, a black car in the middle had its lights on and as I looked in I saw the Pope! He was dressed in his pope outfit, and since there were no other cars and his face was turned towards me, I could clearly see that it was him!!!!

2)   

             2) I had a cooking class at JCU on Wednesday night. This was good for two reasons. First, I finally figured out how to get onto the rooftop terrace of the Tiber Campus- what a beautiful view of the City at night! Second, I got a fairly good four course meal for 15 euro. Unfortunately, it wasn’t good for much else. There were over twenty people who had signed up for the lesson and the teacher was not very diligent about making sure everyone got an equal share in the cooking assingments for the evening. My jobs: chopping onions, carrots, celery,  and plucking the parsley leaves off of their stems; setting the large table; transferring the cookies from their rack to the serving platter. On the bright side, he did email us the recipes, so I can always try to make them myself. Petra Kitchen (my cooking class in Petra) was a far superior experience to Chef Andrea!

I just realized that I might have gone a little picture crazy in this post- hope you enjoy them anyways!
Amy

La dolce vita a Roma

 

January 23, 2001

Hey everybody!! This past week has been an absolute whirlwind. Classes began on Monday, so I have begun to settle into a groove here. My classes are all really interesting and really fun. I am taking Italian, Greek History, Roman History, Roman monumental architecture, and “Cities, Ostias and Villas” (a class about the development of the cities, and different domestic settings within ancient Rome). The last two of these classes meet on Tuesdays and are on-site classes, which mean that except for today (and test days) we meet at a specified spot in Rome wandering around to nearby areas and learning about them! Since we met at the university, I hadn’t expected that our first day of classes would be much more than going over the syllabus, yet for both of them we ended up heading out into Rome for our first hands on learning experience (Though I thought learning about archaeology from the classroom back in wheaton was fun, nothing compares to learning about the Forum IN the forum!!!). Here are two little Roman Archaeological lessons for you:

This is the bottom of Tiber Island, where you can see that the stone has been shaped to look like a boat. Look closely in the front and you can see the outline of a man holding a staff with a snake on it! Recognize the staff/snake? It’s still used today as a symbol of medicine!

Tidbit #1 Tiber Island, the place where Romulus and Remus were born (I mentioned it in my last blog) has been considered a place of healing and to safely give birth to children since the early empire; today there is still a hospital on the spot. But how do the Romans explain this? According to myth, a Plague was devasted early Rome so the leaders of the city consulted the Religious leaders who told them to go to Epidaurus in Greece to find their help. An expedition was soon sent out, and to the Romans surprise, they returned with bringing the god Aesculapius with them. As the barges approached Rome along the Tiber, Aesculapius is said to have left the boat and made his home on the Island. Not only is this a cool story but our teacher pointed out to us that it helps explain the similarities between the Greek and roman pantheon, as well as supporting the dominance of the Roman empire (even gods of other peoples want to be with the Romans!)

Tidbit #2 do you spot anything funny in this picture? It may look at first glance like your typical baroque fountain, in your typical Roman piazza, but alas this fountain is built around a huge bronze tub, taken from a Roman bath in another part of town. Doesn’t it just look like the perfect place for a fun bubble bath?

  

A big part of my first normal week in Rome has been the adjustment of learning to cook all of my food for myself. Not only am I not used to having to shop regularly for groceries but our kitchen is small and the oven does not work very well, limiting both the amount and types of food that I can buy. It also means that I am regularly thrown into interactions with Italians and forced to use my very limited Italian to try to communicate! Luckily, all the Italians I have met have been patient and understanding (and very good at reading hand gestures!), making my time at the market very enjoyable.

This is my first home cooked meal, with my roomies, thanks to John Cabot who provided us with some groceries to start out our adventure in the Kitchen! From left to Right: Divia (my direct roommate), Alex, Stephanie, Virginia, Mary, and Me.

 

This is the first meal in Rome I cooked by myself! It is a pea and prosciutto Risotto, the recipe for which I (tried to) read off the back of the Italian box. This was shortly after my first grocery experience in Rome, and the ingredients come from three different places: a mini market, a butcher (I actually bought meat at a butcher-how cool!) and the open air market down the street from my house. When I was at the open air market, I bought my first fresh mozzarella in Italy (In case you were wondering, I am an absolute cheese fanatic and Fresh Mozzarella is my favorite) and can honestly say that that was some of the best cheese I have ever had in my life! Sorry Garden Fresh, your fresh mozzarella just can’t hold up to the real deal!

In case you were wondering what my apartment looks like, I thought I would upload a few shots of the rooms (sorry if they are a little blurry, we don’t get a ton of natural light so my camera was having a little trouble)

Our Kitchen! Though it is the smallest of the rooms, it has become the hang place of our apartment.

The dining room

The entry hall, complete with coat rack and bright red piano :)

my bedroom

Our beautiful terrace, filled with plants! (let's hope we can keep them alive!)

The view from the terrace: go around the bend in the road and BOOM a view of St. Peter's dome!

And of course, our trusty little pink elevator. He didn't necessarily need to be included, I just felt like he is a fun little addition to my daily apartment life. Plus, it is still so weird to me that the elevator as two manual doors

Ciao from Rome,
Amy