Amalfi; sounds like "I'm Alfi"

Friday, we left the hotel in Rome fairly early in the morning in order to get to the Amalfi Coast.  A bus picked us up and then drove us to Pompeii.  I had been waiting all trip for this as I have always heard from my mother that my grandfather visited Pompeii while he was in the service and it was one of his favorite places, so, needless to say, I was eager to see it for myself.  While a lot of people in my group were complaintive about it being somewhat of a letdown, I was absolutely fascinated.  It’s just unbelievable to walk down alleyways, designated occasionally as a one-way street by the relief of a single donkey carved into the cornerstone of a building.  The people of Pompeii were exceptionally advanced;  their stores were fronted by sliding wooden doors and their streets periodically have raised stones which served the dual purpose of ancient speed bumps and stepping stones from one sidewalk to another to avoid wettig one’s feet.  What's even more amazing about this city's accomplishments is the fact that they were buried under feet of ash for over a thousand years yet now you can walk through the city and relive each of its intricacies.  One of the most fascinating things to me was the “red light district.”  The main brothel was a two-storied building, allowing the women on the second floor balcony to display their attributes to possible clientele passing below.  It contained ten rooms, each with a stone bed (apparently they once were heavily padded with straw), as well as some rather interesting frescoes in the downstairs hallway.  These frescos were not there for inspiration nor decoration but rather served as a sort of “menu” which traveling merchants, who could not speak the language, would point to in order to designate what they wanted.  (How’s that for being euphemistic?  Just trying to keep it kosher).  Our tour guide took us to a restaurant where we got what was probably the most disappointing pizza I have had since arriving in Italy, at least I didn’t have to pay for it.  Soon it was back on the bus for what I would have to say was the most nauseating ride I have ever been on.  Partially the fault of the bus driver who shifted like a 10 year old kid and partially the fact that the road curved around the edge of mountains along the coastline, everybody could not get off that bus fast enough by the time we finally got to Sorrento.  Feeling sick, I just went upstairs to my room and crawled into the first legitimate bed I have slept in since arriving in Italy (I have a bunk bed at Santa Chiara and wound up with the cot at the hotel).  After a short nap, we went downstairs to the dinning room of our hotel.  I don’t know exactly how much this hotel cost but it could not have been cheap.  We were served bread and a three course meal by waiters in tuxes and, unlike at Santa Chiara, we didn’t have to clean up after ourselves, stack our plates, or clear serving dishes.  Megan and I left after dinner to walk around the city a bit.  We stopped off almost immediately at a gelateria.  Megan and Matt, our TA, each got a tiramasu which I tasted but did not like at all, and then I was intrigued by a little plastic parfait glass with what looked like a custard and caramel.  If you know me, you probably know that I love flan and crème brulee (both of which I have successfully made, I might add)  so this looked rather enticing.  I greatly enjoyed my dessert which turned out to be Panna Cotta.  Yet another recipe for me to try when I get back.  We met up then with a couple more friends and continued walking around the city, not seeing anything of much importance but I still loved it.  Compared to Rome, Sorrento was so calm, unpretentious, and unassuming.  Plus with a sea breeze coming across the coast and a distant view of the lights of Naples and the dark hulking mass that is the remnants of Mount Vesuvius across the bay, I finally felt relaxed for the first time since leaving C.F.  Rome was just too busy and flashy for me.  We made our way back to the hotel, spent the night watching a movie, and then got some rest before our busy day on Saturday.

Breakfast was quite an affair in the morning with the same tuxedo’ed waiters making us cappuccinos.  Another bus then picked us up for our tour of the Amalfi coast.  A lot of us were rather hesitant to embark on another bus journey considering the previous day, but we figured we could hopefully withstand the neausia for the sake of the trip.  Turns out, our driver was much much better that day and it was something I would never have forgiven myself if I would have missed out.  We spent probably two hours driving along the coastline, on a road suspended partially off the edge of a cliff so that just looking down was about the only thrill-seeking adrenaline rush I needed for the day.  This road was actually widened a few years ago, however it is still so narrow that tour buses cannot pass each other unless their drivers are exceptionally skilled and willing to get an inch away from cars on either side.  No joke.  If there had been no windows on our bus, we would have been able to touch the other bus as we passed.  We drove through Positano, countless other cities, and then stopped in Amalfi for lunch.  On our way to Amalfi, we stopped off in a pottery and jewelry store.  Almost everybody from my trip bought a ton of stuff, ranging from cups to olive oil pourers, wine corks, and lots of pearl or coral jewelry pieces.  I was very tempted to buy a necklace of twisted strands of river pearls but I’m still holding out for the Ponte Vecchio.  This stop was also the first time we saw the typical Sorento lemon.  Think etrog times ten.  They’re massive.  It was not until we got to Amalfi that we got to experience the true potential of those lemons.  Amalfi is famous for its Limoncello, a liqueur made from the rind of Sorento lemons.  A shop owner gave Megan and I a taste but it was nothing like what I expected.  I assumed it would taste bitter and make my mouth pucker but instead it was sweet, smooth, and very enjoyable.  We wandered around the main street of the city, gazing longingly at all of the sweets and hand-painted pottery in each window.  Megan and I then walked to the pier where we our lunches while looking across the blue water.  The bus ride back was pretty uneventful, I fell asleep for the majority of it.  When we got back to the hotel, most people went to sleep or watched movies but Megan and I wanted to experience the city a bit more.  We wound our way down to the coast.  I cannot recall a more gorgeous sky possibly since that one Aggie football game (if you were there, you know exactly what I’m talking about).  After marveling at the view for an extensive amount of time, we finally made our way back up the mountain towards the center of town.  We passed shops of all shapes and sizes and stopped off at a wine store so that we could have some table wine with dinner.  What we found was a high end store with some wines dating back even to the 70s.  I didn’t even attempt to look at those price tags, but Megan and I were able to find a 2006 Montepulciano d’Abruzzo that was rather inexpensive considering and turned out to be my favorite wine that I have had here yet.  It was nice to walk through a pedestrian friendly city, with no other tourists and an actual Italian culture after spending the week in Rome.  

We had to be packed and ready to go before breakfast Sunday morning because we would be leaving immediately afterwards for Naples.  Honestly, there is not much to say about Naples.  The state of deterioration that the city has gone through since the fall of the Bourbon family hundreds of years ago is appalling and disheartening.  Walking through the Spanish ghetto was quite eye-opening.  Yes, we sometimes joke about having to avoid gypsies and tourist traps, but there is nothing more humbling than walking through the squalor in which the Italian lower-class live.  Grid-like in nature, each intersection of streets in this neighborhood would just give us multiple views of narrow streets with laundry drapped between the buildings on either side.  No building in this city is sacred; every last one is tagged with graffiti while every other doorway has clearly been inhabited by a homeless person sometime within the past week.  I was fascinated by the difference in the unforgiving realism of a place such as this and the pomp and circumstance of Rome.  While I would never recommend Naples as a tourist destination, I’m glad we went and got to experience a different side of Italy, one not touched by tourism, propoganda, or idealism.  On a happier note, I had a very enjoyable lunch of real Neapolitan pizza.  For those of you who are unaware, Naples is in fact the birthplace of pizza so I can now say I went right to the origin.  It was excellent, obviously.  Megan and I actually ate with four of our professors so we not only got good pizza but intelligent conversation as well.  Most of the rest of the day was spent traveling back to Santa Chiara.  Two trains and six hours later, we ate dinner and then got to work on two research papers due during the upcoming the week. Thankfully, I had had an amazing week and weekend before, the memories of which sustained me through my long hours of work.

More to come soon,

Ciao e a dopo

Becca

When in Rome... use Cliches

Up until last Tuesday, I hadn't done much since my last post.  I had a project due for studio Monday so a lot of my week and weekend was spent on schoolwork.  Monday, we presented and then I went to my stone carving class.  I kept working on the piece that I had started the previous week and even decided to take off enough stone to make it into a three dimensional shape instead of just a plain ordinary block with a relief.  Maestro Bruni seemed fairly impressed as somebody else came into his shop and he specifically showed him my work; he did motion towards everybody else's as well, but he made a point to ask where mine was because I had started working on a new one which was just an A&M symbol.  We spent pretty much the entire time working and then made our way back up to Santa Chiara for dinner and to pack for our Rome trip the next morning.  Actually, I spent the majority of the night dominating in ping pong doubles.  But close enough.

one of my stone carving pieces plus my chisel and hammer

Tuesday morning was early, hurried, and stressful.  I had all of my clothes and food packed up for the next six days which meant I was carrying a fair amount of stuff, something I’m not so accustomed to.  We hopped on a train and spent the next few hours riding through the Tuscan countryside until we got to Rome where we were picked up by a bus and driven in the direction of our hotel.  I noticed as we drove that there was a building with Jewish stars and Hebrew on it and tried to remember the exact location so that I could maybe return some day, though it turns out I actually returned a few hours later.  The bus dropped us off after a short while so that we could walk yet another ten minutes to our hotel as it was inaccessible by bus.  Our hotel was interesting in that it was only located on only two floors of a 6 story building.  One set of rooms was on the second floor but us unlucky ones had to climb up another four flights, passing peoples’ homes and ironically an architect’s studio, to reach our rooms on the fifth floor.  For those of you who have not been to Europe, the first floor here is designated as floor 0, meaning that staying on the 5^th floor entails climbing 5 flights of stairs.  Admittedly, there was an elevator, but with a group of 50, a 3 person capacity limit on the elevator, and my lack of patience, I went up a lot of stairs over the course of the next few days.  We were given some free time to grab lunch so I walked around with some friends until they found an acceptable sandwhich shop.  Since it was a glorious, sunny day, we made our way to a piazza just behind our hotel so we could enjoy the weather as we ate.  Roman life was all around us in the form of street performers and artists displaying their pieces, imploring you to help them make a living.  From afar, we watched a man dressed as a cowboy and painted the exact same metallic grey of the streetlamp upon which he stood and listened to the man next to him, a guitarist, singing a cover of Cream’s  Tales of Brave Ulysses.  We sat down on a curbside to eat our lunches while watching people pass by and avoiding the pigeons begging for food.  With a little free time left over, my friends got gelato and then we circled the piazza (which had in ancient times been a circus, the remnants of which can be seen by the oval-like shape of the piazza and the obelisk in its center), stopping inside of a stationary shop.  It was pretty difficult not to buy anything; leatherbound books with hand-made paper, ink fountain pens, wax seal sets.  The most tempting, at least for me, was a leatherbound wine book.  It was in both English and Italian and contained pages to fill in of the name of the wine, the bouquet, the tannins, acid, rating, year, location, etc.  All organized with tabs entitled “Rosso,” “Bianco,” “Champagne,” and “Liqueur.”  My favorite part though was at the front of the book.  There was a single page with years dating from 1975 to 2001 on one axis and locations on the other, and then, in the middle, were starred ratings of the harvest of each of the regions based on the year.  How I would have loved to walk around Italy with that in my pocket!  I managed to convince myself that I could survive without it or come back at some later date so we left for our guided tour around Rome.  The tour itself was lacking and I got pretty disenchanted with listening to our guide ramble on and on about dates for five hours but his running commentary, though dry, did nothing to deprive me of the awesomeness that is Rome.  One of the first things we did was walk through the Jewish Ghetto where the Jews of Rome were forced to live from the 15^th century essentially through the Holocaust.  It truly is inspiring to walk through the physical displays of persecution over multiple centuries only to approach a street of modern times in which a Jewish community still thrives with its massive synagogue (topped by a square dome to differentiate itself from all of the churches of the city) and multiple Kosher restaraunts, bakeries, and cafes.  A church faces the synagogue with an image of Jesus and a biblical quote, the subject of which, from a Jewish perspective, clearly states that the way of Jesus is correct and all those of disagree are lost.  Instead of being offended by this, the Jewish community of Rome apparently took a different perspective, choosing to maintain the quote and painting to instead remind themselves of the torment they have withstood.  One day I would hope to go back to attend a service as I am sure the interior could probably rival that of St. Peter’s or the Duomo.  Our tour quickly passed by the Theater of Marcelus and the Emperor’s palace which faces a piazza containing a copy of the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius.  It’s a little strange to casually pass these things that I have spent years learning about when their importance was stressed so consistently in all of my art and architectural history classes.  We made our way to the ancien Roman Forum but took a pit stop at one of Rome’s hundred of water spigots.  If you ever get a chance to go to Rome, drink the water; it runs freely and constantly from all of these fountains and tastes fantastic, refreshing, and cold.  We again just sort of did an overview of the Roman Forum which unfortunately is not particularly well preserved.  It is a testament to the effects of Christianity on the city that the only remaining buildings from ancient pagan times are those which were turned into churches, the other ones being stripped of their marble facades and columns for the benefit of other churches.  It was from there that we started walking past the column and markets of Trajan down the street which Mussolini had constructed during the Fascist era.  It was then that we realized we were walking towards the colosseum.  

throwing up a gig 'em

The building truly is so incredible, there is little I can say that could adequately describe it.  Not only is it massive, you might even call it colossal (though the name in fact originates from the colossal statue of Nero that once stood next to it), it is ancient and the combination of those two facts is almost unbelieveable.  Though only about a third of it has withstood time, it’s pretty awesome that even that has lasted.  The holes in the building once housed structural metal tie beams which have since been stolen, yet the building still stands.  We were too late to go inside and our tour was finally over, but we were now probably two or three miles away from our hotel and were starving so we walked to a local pizzeria in the direction of the hotel.  Everybody was clearly exhausted so we agreed to take about an hour break at the hotel but an hour turned into three when I fell asleep in a friend’s room as we attempted to watch Star Wars.  I think I made it through the text at the beginning and then was pretty much out until it ended.  Not wanting to stay stuck in a hotel my first night in Rome, I gathered a few other friends and we decided to walk around the city.  We sort of just ambled around but then accidentally happened upon the Trevi Fountain.  It’s pretty neat at night, completely lit with couples all around making wishes on coins.  One Euro to wish that you will return to Rome and two to wish that you will return to Rome and find true love.  After the fountain, we made our way towards St. Peters.  While we just saw it across the river from a distance, it was still incredible, completely lit up and dominating the skyline.  After another gelato stop, we went to the hotel to get some sleep as some of us had decided to wake up early to actually visit the interior of the Colosseum.

I supposed to meet some friends outside the hotel at 8:15 but of course I didn’t wake up until 8:14 so quickly dressed and packed, only about 15 minutes late. After a bit of confusion about how to buy tickets, we finally figured out how to get inside the Colosseum.  I truly enjoyed myself.  Though it was exceptionally cold, it was fantastic trying to analyze which parts to the building are ancient Roman, which are Christian renovations, and how difficult it would be to try to use the tie beam holes to scale the walls (not that I ever would, that would be just about as blasphemous as you can get).  It’s a good thing we got there early as tour after tour soon invaded the structure and it just became too crowded.  I can’t imagine what it must look like on a midafternoon of the high season, it being this crowded on a frigid February morning.  After ogling the building for a while, we made our way towards the Pantheon.  Italian medieval and ancient towns are strange in relation to the use of sight lines.  Most buildings are just happened upon without a formal or grand entry.  So it is with the Pantheon so that one second you are walking down a narrow street and the next, you are in the middle of a large and noisy piazza facing one of the structural marvels of ancient and pretty much modern times as well.  The duomo was pretty impressive until you think about this building.  

No cracks, no imperfections, and built fourteen centuries before.  The intricate marble work was grand and impressive, but nothing was more impactful to me than the coffered dome rising high above me and culminating in the open occulous.  For a moment, we sat down to watch the large circle of sunlight slide slowly down the side of the dome but then it was off to the Trevi Fountain once again.  I didn’t think it was quite as gorgeous in the sunlight but it was by no means any less impressive.  I’m not so sure what the history of the fountain is though I know it has something to do with seahorses; however the sculptor took "seahorses" a little too literally and carved horses physically coming out of the sea while Poseidon towers behind them.  My group ran into another at the fountain where we did a little mix and match action because everybody had different plans for lunch.  

It was then off to the Vatican.  Honestly, the Vatican was a bit of a let down.  The Piazza that Michelangelo designed seemed smaller in scale than I had expected and while the corridors full of paintings, tapestry, and sculpture were fantastic, they also seemed endless and quickly became repetitive.  Plus the fact that we were surrounded by a loud group of barbarian Italian children and our tour guide practically whispered did not help the situation.  The Sistine chapel was also a bit of a letdown, moreso because of the environment, but still.  We were crammed inside of the tiny chapel with hundreds of other people, all trying to catch a glimpse of Michelangelo’s famous frescos while ushers constantly shouted “no video, no photo,” though of course there were multiple offenders who just had to take their own, professional ones obviously would not suffice.  It was an experience to stand directly under the image of god and Adam, but I was actually more intrigued by the Last Judgement altarpiece and Perugino’s Delivery of the Keys.  It felt like we were being hearded like cattle out of the Sisting Chapel and down another hallway and then finally, we were in St. Peter’s Basilica, the largest church in the world.  Maybe I don’t like crowds or maybe I’m claustrophobic, but entering St. Peter’s was like a breath of fresh air.  The massive nave towered above us in all of its Renaissance glory while the adorning statues were larger than life-size.  Even the lettering underneath the clerestory is taller than I am at six feet high.  The plan, like most curches, is made up of a central nave crossed by a transept while the intersection of the two is capped by a dome.  This dome, however, is large enough to fit the Statue of Libery in, if that gives you any sense of scale.  I especially loved being able to stare up at the Barberini family baldacchino, one of my favorite pieces of sculpture, massive in scale and a little out of the ordinary with its bee-adorned spiral columns.  We finally exited St. Peter’s and the Vatican and then walked to a restaurant to eat dinner.  It was my one night of splurging in Rome with a huge pasta dish and wine but the company and conversation were excellent, generally revolving of course, around architecture.  

the baldaccino, made from bronze that originally adorned the pantheon (but they had enough left over to still make 100 cannons)

Thursday morning we woke up to go on our tour at 8:15. Our first stop was the pantheon where everybody, for inexplicable reasons because it was freezing, sat down and started sketching.  I tried to draw for a bit and managed mainly to sketch of the floor plan and the way that light affected the coffers but then we all left to get cappuccinos.    Went on our tour with the same dry tour guide we had endured our first day in Rome so we got tired of it pretty fast. One of the few interesting parts of the day was when we saw a church that that had been built on top of another church that had been built on top of a Roman basilica so that means that it went three levels down.  We then made our way to St. John the Latern which is apparently the most “important church in rome and the world.”  St. John’s is actually the Cathedral of Rome, not St. Peters though why it is called St. John’s I cannot fathom because this cathedral is supposedly the one that houses the heads of both St. Peter and St. Paul.  Go figure.  Catholicism confuses me.  We were then led to the Palazzo Popolo where I ate on the steps of a fountain, sketched a little, and then took the tram to the Maxxi museum, Zaha Hadid’s most recent creation. 

the stairways inside the Maxxi

I really liked the building with its stark black and white contrasted with a permanent red light installation.  It was quite a compliment when a friend whose opinion I greatly value, asked what an aerial photo of the museum reminded me of.  In a quizzical manner, I responded, “Your theater project?” but he said instead, “Your project for Mark.”  It was one thing that he thought a world-famous museum was reminiscent of one of my projects but it was entirely another that he even remembered it considering I completed that project last spring and he wasn’t even in my class at the time.  It must have made a real impression.  Feel good moment of the week.  The more I walked throught he building though, the more I had to agree with him.  There were certain moments throughout the building that I could tell she had created on purpose to elicit an emotion that was similar to the method and means I had inteded for my project.  I spent my last night in Rome hanging out with friends so all in all, it was a great ending to a great trip.  And then it was on to the coast...

...but that's another story for another time so,

a dopo e ciao,

Becca