In the Shadow of Caesar: 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) 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!