Roma, Italia-Thanksgiving weekend + my two favorite churches

Things I’m going to miss: going to the market and buying a fresh tomato, going to the cheese stand to buy buffalo mozzarella, going to a farm stand and asking for “basilica” (basil) and being handed a huge bunch for 10 cents (“Dieci cintesi?” “Si!” “Grazie!!”), coming back upstairs, and making delicious caprese salad. I don’t think you can properly understand the glory of buffalo mozzarella until you’ve eaten it.
Yesterday was Rachel’s birthday, so we all went out for dinner. We ended up at the same place Jeff, Liz, and I went to before they all left for Torino for the exhibition. Delicious, cheap food! I split caprese salad with Liz, had sautéed spinach, bread with oil and vinegar, and penne alla arabiatta (spicy tomato sauce with parsley). To top it off, crema catallana, which wound up being a custard-like thing that got blow torched à la crème bruleé.
This past weekend was our Thanksgiving break, too, which was lovely. Some people travelled, but I decided to stay put and explore Rome, as did many other people. I already wrote about Thanksgiving itself, but the rest of the weekend was great, too. A lot of it I spent just having me time wandering the city. My two favorite areas are definitely Trastevere and the Papal Way. I devoted plenty of time to both, and in doing so got a much better lay of the land (including lots of windy back streets that I didn’t realized linked up) and found lots of fun shops. The best gem by far was Polvere di Tempo (Power of Time), a shop that specialized in hand-made old-fashioned time keeping devices (such as hourglasses and sundials). They also had sweet globes. Everything there was beautifully hand crafted and I could only imagine the labor that went into all of them. I had so much fun just looking around and snapping pictures. They have a website, too. It totally doesn’t do the shop justice, but is still pretty neat: http://www.polvereditempo.com/inglese/index.htm. I also found a great bead shop on Via Sora (between the papal way and Corso Vittorio), packed with colorful glass pretties. There were all sorts of glass ornaments and colorful strings hanging from the ceiling, too. Again, many pictures were taken.
Viv and I have started our history project on San Carlino alle Quattro Fontane, as well. We’re binding our own book of sketches and photos. We bought really nice paper, found some old floral engravings for covers, and are binding it with leather string. I’m so excited! This church (can’t remember if I’ve talked about it yet) is tied for favorite with Sant’ Ivo (both by Borromini, I’m a sucker). We spent a while two different mornings there photographing and figuring out what we want to put in our book. Gahhh, I could spend all day in that church sketching! Actually, I probably will devote a day to that once I have tons of free time after our studio final review. I took a panoramic picture of the entire dome and entablature that came out magnificently. It’s hard to show everything in one picture, and to get everything lined up just right from the center is also tricky, but this one came out great! It’s my new baby. Of course, I also went back to Sant’ Ivo Sunday morning and wrote in a journal for a while, as I didn’t quite have enough time to sketch.

Also, there are a few things that happened way before the Southern trip that I never got around to writing about. Oops! We had a haircutting party one night in the apartment. Viv and Caitlin were a dynamic duo and cut 8 or 9 heads in total, including mine! Nothing drastic, just all around shorter, lighter, and cuter. There was tons of hair on the floor when they were done, though! They did a great job on everyone and we all had fun hanging out and watching.
Also, Cinzia took us out to a wine tasting one night! We sampled three different reds and ended tasting with a plate of appetizers. It was really fun, despite the super long lecture before actually trying any wine. The guy talking went on forever and ever! He also had a very thick accent (he spoke in English) which made it hard to focus after a while. We were amused by being told to “wish around” our wine and “nose” it, though. Also, by the end we were able to distinguish many differences between all three (but don’t ask me what they were called) by smelling them, looking at the legs, and looking at the color above the white table cloth. Now any time we go out, we all “wish” around our wine and pretend like we actually know what we’re talking about. :D
The Saturday before everyone left for Torino, we took a day trip as a studio out to Hadrian’s Villa. He was an emperor from the 2nd century and built a villa that he barely had time to ever live at. It was a huge, huge complex, made up of many different buildings, and we were given a few hours to go explore, sketch, or do whatever. We ended up traipsing about and taking lots of funny pictures (including a reenactment of a naval battle-I was a slain sea monster) as we explored.
Next, we went to a war memorial for a group of people that lost their lives in WWII in Italy after an affront with a German group. The memorial was beautifully designed, and we took some time to walk around through the tombs reading names and looking at all the flowers. Finally, we went to a church by Richard Meier. It looked neat from the outside, with three billowing arcs rising from the ground, but I was a bit disappointed inside. The arcs had been cut away so much that they didn’t read, and the glazing and roof truss systems made the interior feel a bit like an airport terminal to me. My general consensus was very cool space, but not very church-like. Oh well, still glad I saw it.
I think that wraps it up for things I fell behind on. Viv and I are off to studio to go work on our book, and then we have tomorrow to work on it as well. We took our history final this morning (not too bad), so once we’re done with the project all we have left is studio. It’s scary how quickly everything is wrapping up, and I’m going to miss life in Rome a ton, but I think I’ll be ready in three weeks…I’m really starting to miss everyone a lot.
One last side note…today is Potter’s and my three year anniversary! I sent him a handmade card that got there just in time and we’ll go out for a nice dinner when I get home. :)

PICTURE: the dome of San Carlino! Lovelovelove.