Roma, Italia-last 2 days of the semester + trip home

Gah! I can’t believe this is going to be the last entry of my Rome journal. A few random things I’d forgotten that don’t fit nicely into the sequence of this entry: the Tiber River was crazily flooding our last week of studio. I mentioned it in the final dinner entry, but I don’t think I properly conveyed the insanity of it. The river flooded over half the height of its embankment, which is huge. It takes three full runs of stairs to reach the base of it, and it was past half way. Crazy! The water was rushing by, much faster than I’d ever seen it. It actually caused some sort of boat/raft thing to crash into Ponte Sant’ Angelo, and they had the bridge closed for days. There were all sorts of trucks and cranes on it, picking debris out of the water. This prevented me from getting close ups of Bernini’s angel statues along the bridge! Sad. Also, at one point in the final week, our washing machine was replaced (the old one flooded the bathroom every time you tried to run it). The new one barely fit down the hallway (I had to loan the workers my Swiss Army knife to disassemble it a bit), but eventually made it. It’s much quieter than our old one (which sounded like a rocket ship during its spin cycle), but is still considerably noisier than any American machine would ever be. It does, however, pivot on one corner and dance its way away from the wall. Quite amusing.
Wednesday morning I began my morning with two photo series: I wanted to document my daily life in Rome, not just the monuments I saw, for my family. I took pictures of my journey from my apartment to the grocery store (passing through the market, past where I bought eggs from a meat shop, past studio, through a tunnel, past a leather shop, and around a few corners to the store) and from my apartment to Italian class, which is on the other side of town. That journey took me through the Campo, past Sant’ Andrea della Valle, past Ciuri Ciuri, along the back of Sant’ Ivo, into a church I’d never been in, along the side of and across the front of the Pantheon, past another cute little church, past a nice bookshop, through the piazza with riveted stars on the ground, past the Colonna column, into a tiny church, along Via del Tritone, down Via dei Due Maceli, and to class.
Next I went up to Borromini’s San Carlino alle Quattro Fontane. I’d never gotten proper pictures of the façade or the four fountains themselves, so I did that. I also got what Andrew deemed last fall to be “life elixir”: ¼ of a bottle of water from each fountain, mixed into one bottle. I then went inside, took a few pictures, and sat, looking around. I went into the cloister and took some neat photos looking into puddles and seeing the reflection of the lantern.
I walked down along Via XX Settembre to Palazzo del Quirinale, and went to the Scuderie Gallery next door to go to the Bellini exhibit, which was fabulous (“fabolos”). It was exiting to look at the tags of where the paintings were originally housed and realize I’d been to many of the museums. One wall was of Madonna and Childs, all of the same composition but done at various points in Bellini’s career and thus vastly different. The paintings came from the Met in NYC, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and Castel Vecchio in Verona. I’d been to all of them! Score. Look at me, being all cultured and world-travelled and everything.
After the exhibit, I wandered my way towards the Pantheon, took many detail photos of the porch that I’d never noticed before, and did two sketches of the exterior façade. I had fun sitting on the steps of the piazza’s fountain, people watching and listening to some Americans next to me chatting away about their travels and over hearing a group of American Asians behind me learning common phrases from a guide book.
That night Liz and I decided we’d had enough of foraging in the apartment for leftovers, so we wandered around Trastevere until we found a place to eat. Although it was a bit empty (we were a bit early for Italian dinner), the food was very good. I got penne arrabiata (spicy tomato sauce) and Liz got a delicious mushroom sauce on her spaghetti. The wine was good (we decided to only tackle a half bottle) and our waiter gave us a Jewish artichoke at the end of our meal on the house. After dinner, we continued our night tour at the Trevi fountain, making sure to through in our touristic coins to ensure we’d come back, and got some wonderful panos of the entire fountain (it’s much bigger than I’d ever realized!). We next went up to the Spanish steps, which were decked out with tons of Christmas lights and a color-changing Christmas tree made entirely of lights (sounds cool, but was actually quite tacky). We went up to Piazza del Popolo next, and took pictures of the fountains around the obelisk, which looked beautiful at night with their lighting. On our way back, we stopped by Piazza Navona. Bernini’s Four Rivers Fountain hadn’t been lit up yet (it just came out of renovation), but that night it was illuminated! We took many pictures of it and had fun looking at the tchachke and candy filled Christmas market. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, a heard of Santas came in on roller blades. They circled around the piazza a few times before invading the carousel. They filled it! They looked to be teens or 20-somethings, both male and female, and there were TONS of them! They piled onto the carousel, some hung onto the edge and spun along the cobblestones, and they were even accompanied by an adorable pooch with antlers.
The next day, Thursday, was our last. I made sure to start my day with a cappuccino and cornetto (croissant) from Joe’s. I then headed promptly up to Piazza del Popolo-I was determined to see the murder site from “Angels and Demons” at Santa Maria del Popolo! I made it to the piazza in 20 minutes-record time. I approached the church and was excited to see the door open. I went inside, and looked around-it was a neat little church, made of stone and simply decorated. After exploring a bit, I started looking for the specific chapel that was referenced-the Chigi Chapel. I found it quickly, but what had happened? It was covered in plastic tarp and scaffolding! What a bummer. The sides of the chapel were showing, but the altar, the best part, was completely invisible. Bahhhhhh. Just my luck. Oh well.
I took a long walk back to the Campo, taking time to stop in probably close to 10 churches. One of them, All Saints’ Anglican Church, was gorgeous inside. Gothic pointed arches and ribbing filled the interior. The façade was marked by a pointy turret, and the floors were of beautiful wood. Plaques around the edges commemorated English priests or visitors to the church. I love the typical Roman churches, but this was a nice change. I also popped into Basilica dei SS Ambrogio e Carlo, which was quite possibly the gaudiest church I’ve ever set foot in. The interior was nothing but gilding and faux-marble, much of which was ridiculously striped. The whole thing was so lavish, it was almost comical!
I made my way back to the apartment and woke up Liz (the girl can sleep) so that we could go to the Geniculum hill, which is where I went with Andrew to get a spectacular view of Rome. We made it up the hill and had fun identifying some of the many church domes and taking pictures. We then went to the Tempietto, which I had already visited with Andrew, but Liz hadn’t seen. I was glad I knew where it was, because she had wanted to see it all semester. Luckily, it was open, so we enjoyed going inside, looking around, and walking its tiny perimeter to peek at the tomb below. After we were done, we wound our way back down the hill through little Trastevere streets. We stopped in Santa Maria in Trastevere, which I had been in once before. The lighting this time was exquisite, though, and I was in awe of the beautifully gilded wooden ceiling, spolia columns (recycled from other ruins), stained glass, ornate chapel, and stone mosaic flooring. Liz and I lit candles and stuck them into the bowls of sand (a clever way of displaying them).
Liz and I then split up, and I went back to the Pantheon for some quality time. I did two sketches of the interior coffers while there was still natural lighting (artificial lighting is gross), then just sat on the steps of the fountain for quite a while. I people watched, dog watched, marveled at the Pantheon, and just sat, taking it all in. I don’t remember specifics, but I’m sure I teared up a couple times, realizing that I really was about to leave Rome after a whole semester of living there.
I went back to the apartment to grab a warmer jacket and regroup a little. I decided to try going to the crypts at St. Peter’s one last time in hopes that they might be more open than they had been on my previous visit. I gathered up my things, went to the door…and couldn’t open it. I tried to flip the deadbolt, but it didn’t move (it never does, so I was sure that wasn’t it). I turned the handle, and the latch just…didn’t catch. There was no hope of trying the credit card or hanger trick; this was a heavy duty door. Starting to freak a little, I tried to call Liz, but my phone was out of minutes. It ended up being a long gaffufle, but I ended up using Potter’s skype account (mine was almost out) to call Liz’s cell, and she said she’d start back to the apartment. Before she got back, though, Kendall returned (she and her mom were using one of the rooms), and it turned out that the door had somehow been double-bolted, which apparently can’t be undone from the inside. I have no idea, Italians are weird. Anyway, that ended up killing so much time that it wasn’t worth it for me to go to the crypts. I convinced myself that they probably would have still been roped off though, so it was alright.
Liz and I went back to the bead shop that I’d gone to and explored the downstairs part of the store for a while. It’s full of beaded light fixtures, hand painted glasses, tiny little vases, all of which are just piled into boxes like regular old merchandise. We next went to Polvere di Tempo, the hourglass-globe-time keeping store I’d been to once. Liz absolutely loved it and we both bought bookmarks of the Nolli plan with corresponding pins. The storekeeper was very nice and packaged them up, stapled on their business card, then covered the staple with a wax seal with the person’s initials. Such a nice touch!
That night, we went out for a nice dinner, Liz’s mom’s treat. (She felt badly that we weren’t able to travel the last week and instructed Liz to take us both out for dinner). We went to a great place over in Trastevere that Liz had been to with her parents when they visited. They had a case full of truffles in the entry that when I showed Dad the picture, he exclaimed that they’d be worth thousands of dollars in the states. We split a bottle of house wine, which was delicious. For appetizers, we shared a plate of gorgonzola and a slice of bruschetta brushed with olive oil and topped with shaved truffles. We both got their apparently famous ravioli Bellini. The menu wouldn’t specify what was in them, only that they contained no meat or fish and had won many awards, so we said sure! Liz’s was served right in the pan they’d been cooked in, and mine were transferred to a plate. Afterwards, we both had Roman artichokes (warm), which we couldn’t even finish. Of course we had to save room for dessert, though! Liz couldn’t resist one last tiramisù, and I got mille foglio (literally thousand layers), which was a delicious custard with layers of pastry on top (as if someone had taken the pastry in their hand and simply crumbled it).
We went back to the apartment, finished up packing (using Rach’s hand-held scale to make sure we weren’t overweight), and had a few airline delay scares. I mistakenly thought my flights had been delayed, when it turns out I had accidently checked arrival times instead of departures. Liz’s flight did end up being delayed by a few hours. We also had to deal with flying into a huge snow storm. Liz lives on Long Island (we both flew into JFK separately) so she didn’t have many problems. However, I live at least 3 hours away from JFK and ended up spending the night at Potter’s apartment in Jersey City. He didn’t have his car, so we had to take four subways (air rail, two city subways, and one path train) and a taxi to get there. The next morning a friend of his drove him to his car and we finally made it back to my home!
Well, I think that’s it! I won’t do any in-depth post-trip reflection; I think it’s been pretty evident that it was a fabulous trip and I grew and learned more than I ever thought I would. It’s been fun writing this journal; I’m so glad I kept up with it the whole way through.
Finito! Ciao ciao!

PICTURES: my pano of the Pantheon dome, the Santa-invaded carousel, the Tempietto, the interior of Santa Maria in Trastevere, and the truffles at dinner.