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beainitaly · 7 years

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Roma

Hello All! Less than a week left now before I return to the states…. it seems unreal! Seeing as we have just begun July, I think it is the perfect time to talk about the trip I took at the beginning of June :)

As a quick aside- also at the beginning of June I visited the lovely seaside town of Diamante with my host family.

The big trip here was going to Rome!!!! In fact, Mom was even able to come over through lucky opportunities, and we spent four lovely days together in Italy’s capitol. I arrived on Thursday afternoon, which was actually during an italian “Ponte” which means bridge, basically when they have a day of vacation on Thursday or Friday and then they give you school off on Saturday as well. This was just a coincidence planning wise, but it meant that I didn’t actually miss much school, for which I was grateful. It’s a bit of a long journey from Cosenza: 6 to 7 hours depending on how you do it, but I relaxed and listened to some good music on the train. I met Mom at the hotel, and soon thereafter we went for a kind of walking tour with several stops (this is edited, we did too much to include it all!).

First we saw Trajan’s Column, which is next to the Altar della Patria (aka Monument Nazionale a Vittorio Emanuel II, you can see it in the background).

From there we continued on to the Basilica Santa Maria Maggiore, the largest church dedicated to Mary in Rome. They had this awesome floor design.

Everything on the walls was gold and white and decorated, and the lighting was gorgeous.

After that we went to the Imperial Forum, also known as Trajan’s Market, which was really interesting. I guess the best way to describe it is like a mall for ancient romans. It had three levels, and on each there was a long hallway with tons of little rooms branching off. In each one there would be a different trader or little shop set up when it was in use.

We were planning on returning near the hotel for dinner, but were so hungry that we stopped part-way there at Piazza Santa Ignazio for pizza. At the end of the night, we went to the square in front of the Pantheon and had some delicious gelato while taking in the view.

The next morning, after a wonderful breakfast at the hotel (I’m a sucker for buffets), we visited the Doria Pamphilij, a museum that houses the collection of an old roman family who still run the property today. The house was originally owned by Camilo Pamphilij, nephew of Pope Innocent X. As an aside, this nephew was given a cardinalship by the pope his uncle, which is believed to be the origin of the word nepotism. They had a lovely collection, 10/10 would recommend.

In the afternoon we went to the Galleria Borghese, located at the Villa Borghese above the center of the city. Seeing as we had already purchased timed tickets in advance for 5pm, and then at 4:30 realized that it was going to take 50 minutes to walk there, we did the classic Bianco sprint to reach our destination (we made it). This was my absolute favorite painting I saw there:

Portrait of Lady with a Unicorn by Raphael!!

They also had an astonishing number of Caravaggios and Berninis, which I had learned about in my history of art class this year, so it was a treat to see the real objects!

After exiting the museum, we took a walk through the gardens. On a whim we saw people driving around those bike cars, and remembering certain incidents with those in our past, namely getting stuck on a highway roundabout, we decided to rent one. The bike rental guy asked me if I could drive when he was setting the bike up, and assuming that he just needed to explain the controls and that then I would hand it over to Mom, I said yes (I can, in theory, but don’t have much practice or a license). He proceeded to place me in the drivers seat and then watch after us as we left, which was a bit hilarious because it turns out the thing had a motor and whenever I started to peddle it revved up and we started going veeeery fast. It was a bit of an adventure (read: possibly life threatening and hilarious).

Walking back to the hotel we stopped at the Trevi fountain. The setting sun made everything look beautiful.

Bright and early on the third day we took a cab a ways outside the city to visit the church of San Paulo Fuori le Mora (outside the walls). It was absolutely enormous, and had mosaic portraits of every pope ever lining the upper edge of the walls. From there we walked to the Centrale Montemartini museum which was super cool. It was originally a thermoelectric plant, producing electricity from 1913-1963, but was converted into a holding space for many archeological finds from the Capitoline Museum undergoing renovations in 1995. After the completion of the renovations in 2005, they decided to keep many of the pieces there. I loved the mix of old and new, the idea of Rome changing over time, and some of the pieces in the museum were fascinating.

After lunch we went to an exhibit called “One Day I Broke a Mirror” of Yoko Ono and Claire Tabouret at the French Academy in Villa Medici. The work was very interesting, and engaging, raising questions about different opportunities in life particularly for women. In Ono’s fluxus style, the work requires your participation to be complete. Here is Mom doing “Yes!” and me doing “Wish Tree”.

On our last day, we went to the Capitoline Museum. It is often considered the oldest museum, ever, home to countless ancient roman, medieval, and renaissance works. The nature of the museum was sprawling, with a confusing (or possibly nonexistent) path through it. While purchasing tickets at the front desk, we randomly decided to rent an iPad guide just for the fun of it, and let me tell you that it was maybe the best decision I’ve ever made. The guide had important works numbered in the order you were supposed to see them, with a little audio clip explaining some history of each one. Because it was nigh impossible to tell which way you were meant to go, we resorted to looking at the thumbnail for the next piece on the tour and then looking for it as a sort of hide and seek, warmer or colder way of finding the recommended path, which in my opinion just added to the fun. This is the classic sculpture of la lupa (mother wolf) with twins romulus and remus, who led to the founding of Rome according to legend.

This was a statue of Athena, 4th-5th century BCE, which I quite liked- can you believe how that fabric is carved!!!

At one point you got to this overlook where you could see all of the Ancient Roman ruins of the Forum

For a change of pace we ate tacos for lunch, the first time since arriving in Italy that I’ve eaten anything not Italian food or sushi. I definitely went overboard on the guac but it was soooooo good!

Because this lunch was so filling, we decided to have gelato from Giolitti for dinner instead of a proper meal. Mine was this fabulous creation with hazelnut, chocolate, and nougat flavored gelato inside with a whipped cream and chopped nut coating.

The next morning I took the train back to Cosenza, and that was also the last week of school. The time flew by! I couldn’t really believe school was over, seeing as it had been a constant here in my life in Italy. On the last day of school we had our earthquake drill (we have to do one each year, and I guess they kept putting it off) which meant all the kids had to go stand outside for like 20 minutes. In this short time period, the whole school descended into chaos. Kids were pulling water balloons and water guns out of their backpacks, others had purchased a six pack of water bottles and just started flinging them at people. There were no teams, no mercy. By the time that 20 minutes were up, everyone was bolting towards the school screaming, soaking wet. As we tried to get in the building, kids leaned out the windows from the upper floors and pelted the others with water balloons or just dumped entire buckets down. Once in the classroom again, visitors kept arriving for the rest of the day to spontaneously throw water at everyone, my class brought in some cake and cracked a bottle of spumante, and then we all went home. That afternoon with my friends they asked me if I had gone to school. I said, “yes, of course, did you?” they replied that no, they hadn’t, because they wanted to avoid the water. This tells me that the water war is a traditional and terrifying last day of school activity that nobody thought to prepare me for :D

That afternoon I went to my friend’s house for lunch. She lives in a village 10 minutes away from the city, but with a lovely view looking down towards the center.

We baked a chocolate and nutella cake, and everything was good :)

Enjoy the beginning of July! It’s hot as hell here in Cosenza, reaching 103 a few days ago…. hopefully the next post is coming soon!

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