The Deluge

We awoke Sunday a bit earlier, in time to pack and have breakfast before hopping a taxi to Roma Termini, the main station in Rome. The driver was very friendly, chattering in English and Italian about his 3 sons ages 18, 15 and 10 and pointing out the major ruin sites we passed. That he could manage to talk to us in the back seat (using his hands the way Italians do) while maneuvering successfully through the tangled Roman traffic was nothing short of astonishing. There was only one moment when my heart was in my throat. He cut a blind corner with high walls on either side all while looking back at us...then I realized we were on a one-way road--whew! But a lovely crazy Roman ride it was.

From the station we boarded the Frecciargento--the high speed train from Rome to Florence. The ride was marvelous--smooth and a bit posh. Loie had booked us first class so we would have the extra room for our luggage. We enjoyed our complimentary snack and beverage while our ears popped and rolling green hills and tunnels flew by at 150 mph!

In Florence we checked into the Hotel Lido, a small, boutique hotel with amazing, bright, yellow, hand-trowel-polished plaster walls (a la the Walker Art Center). It's located in a quieter part of town near the Arno and across the street from our cooking school. A convenient ride on the no. 14 bus into the heart of the busy tourist area.

We unpacked and were taking a short walk in the neighborhood when the rain began. Three hours later, it was still pouring hard, but it was getting late and we needed some supper. We set out with our umbrellas and a recommendation from the hotel clerk for a bistro that was reportedly 2 minutes away. Seven or 8 minutes later, we had earned our water rescue stripes, having forded numerous rivers and dams, which had replaced the sidewalks and storm sewers!

We had arrived dripping but intact, and our spirits lifted as we entered the beautiful Outside Bistrot (what's with the terminal t?). An inauspicious name that night, but they had plenty of indoor seating too, where we enjoyed the best meal we've had in Italy yet: a delicious salad of greens, apple, pear, carrot, cabbage, fennel, and the most delightful black olives with superb olive oil and balsamic vinegar, as well as a lovely pizza with stewed tomato, olives and fresh stracciatella. We waited on the rain to let up while appreciating the kind service (no snickers when we arrived in pants 8 inches damp up the hem and dripping jackets), the gorgeous contemporary interior design, and a terrific chocolate gelato for dessert.

Now all we need is a ladder

After our visit to San Clemente, we wound our way through a public garden, back toward the Colosseo and the Arch of Constantine, then to the Circus Massimus, where the festival Cibo d'Italia featured wines, cheese, meats, etc., from all the regions of Italy. Wild to be in a great public space, full of Italians, two centuries after all those chariot races.

We sampled some oils and bought some Calabrese olives--vacuum packed for travel convenience, but I wouldn't count on them making it home :-) We tried some Pratorosso--an Italian microbrew. It was delicious and packed an 8.2% alcohol content. Don't let anyone tell you they don't make great beer in Italy. The Rossa (Red) was terrific.

We crossed the Fiume Tevere at the Ponte Palatino, enjoying the views of the great Tiber river below the ancient walls. On the other side the Trastevere was calling our name for a bit of a walk about and some dinner. Known as Rome's version of the Left Bank, the area was full of ristoranti and shops fronting narrow streets and colorful alleys, all open late.

We had a tasty meal at a sidewalk cafe, leaving with plenty of time to catch our hotel shuttle, or so we thought. But the perils of google maps in old European cities became clear when the app delivered us to a dead end alley roughly 30 ft below our shuttle bus stop (no elevation markers)! Thankfully a nice young man at a small negozio redirected our path--it felt completely wrong but we had to go with it, and sure enough, his directions were spot on, and we arrived in time to chat with a lovely couple (he was Lebanese, she Brazilian, but they live in Tampa) on the bus on the way back to the hotel.

The remarkable San Clemente

About 4 blocks to the east from il Colesso is a church that takes up all of a small block, backing up to the busy Via Labicana and surrounded by high walls. Pleasant, but not unusual from the outside, we waited with 1-2 other small groups for the doors to open (many places are closed from lunch to midafternoon). As the time drew near to 3:30p, the crowd grew to nearly 30 people, all anxious to discover why this wait was so necessary.

The door opened and we entered the Basilica, which is very fine with a decorated ceiling of gilt and paint, well done, but not in and of itself unique in this part of the world. The group of us crossed the beautiful marble floor to a ticket office, paid our easy 5 euro fee, and filtered through a door leading to the lower level of the church--a catacomb perhaps? Uncertain, but obviously the crowd knew something we didn't, we followed them down a steep staircase to a low lit area, very dank smelling.

What you discover is another church, this one some 700 or so years older than the one sitting on top of it (which was already 13th century or so). Decorating the walls are some 11th century frescoes--mostly stories of Sts. Clemente and Alessandro. The light is dim, but the middle age influence is clear--the faces are flat and the eyes pronounced and round. The floor is uneven, even unsafe, and covered with rubber matting, so you move a little cautiously. There are translations in English of the didactics and the tomb of a former prefect of the Vatican library. But as you admire the frescoes, you notice the crowd is vanishing, not up to the church, but down yet again. A narrower and steeper staircase at the far end of this 2nd, older church takes you once again down to a deeper level.

This time you notice narrower walls, long, dark brick hallways, simple stone benches, and you learn you have entered a Roman public house from the 1st century, part of which was used as a Mithraeum, or a temple to the pagan god Mithras! In the distance, you can here water running--so far below ground, perhaps the sewer?

Ducking under a series of short, arched doorways through room after room--each with a row of square windows at elbow height (for circulation?) connecting to adjacent rooms--and reach the room at the end, which features a natural spring coming through a pipe into a trough. The air is cool, the mustyness no longer as noticeable, and you think, maybe I could live like a Roman after all.

The next day: the great sleep in

We made it through that grueling first day, napping briefly between our visit to the Vatican and dinner at our hotel. The lines into St. Peter were long and the secret entrance at the Sistine Chapel was not available to the casual tourist, so we 

vowed to return during the week.

By 9pm we were sacked and ready for bed...best last words: "I'm going to try to stay awake just a little longer...[snore]"

We slept in the next morning and got a leisurely start to our first full day in the eternal city. We caught a bus to the Cornelia metro station, then took the subway to the stazione Colosseo.

Walking out of the darkened station and having just admired a much graffitied train, you step into...the light shining brilliantly through the arches of one of the wonders of the ancient world--just standing there across the street in front of you, as big as nobody's business, as big as three football fields, as big as, well, as big as the Coliseum! "Hello," it says, "where have you been?"

So, about the Sistine Chapel...

You have to imagine you are slowly walking through room after room of opulence, and then when you think you can't stand a single minute more of the crowd or the waits for the toilet you enter a hall nearly empty of fixture or furniture with a tall ceiling. Suddenly their is no gilt, only paint, but on every square inch of walls and ceiling. A series of high windows let in soft filtered light, but it is subdued, not bright, and the hand of god seems much more tenuous than that brief contact with Adam without a pair of opera glasses. The crowd collects here, not passing through, since THIS is what all that long slog through decorated galleries was about--you feel the difference in this space as people of all languages stand around looking up. The conversations build slowly to a rumble and then a bit more, before the guards shush everyone quiet, and the whole process begins again. Pictures are forbidden, but everyone is taking them, even with flash, so after a few minutes of duty, one's finger makes the inevitable progress to the camera for a quick shot or two, or three, oh well. Even the stern guards don't seem to see the justice in enforcing this rule. It is Michelangelo for goodness sake!

I Musei Vaticani

After a night of no sleep and a shuttle ride from the airport, we arrived at the Crown Plaza St. Peter. It was only 10a, so there were no rooms available. We freshened up in the lobby rest rooms--earning sympathetic glances from a group of ladies who had been through the same ritual only the day before.

We checked our luggage and set out for St. Peter/the Vatican. The hotel shuttle dropped us nearby, but we needed some fortification before all the Catholicism to come, so we stopped for our first Italian meal--pork cutlets, spinach and potatoes--at a local osteria.

Much restored, we headed for St. Peter's Square in the mild drizzle of rain that greeted us in Rome. The square was vast, but a little drab under the gray sky and without the fanfare of a high holiday crowd. We found our way through the square to the entrance of the Vatican Museums, passing by numerous unfortunates with mangled or missing limbs displayed lying on the sidewalk and begging us to place some coins in their weathered styrofoam cups.

The series of Vatican museums is impressive--the sheer volume of works of art (almost entirely religious in subject--as was the case throughout much of history) is astonishing. The Pinoteca was organized chronologically, and it was interesting to watch the humanist influence enter in the mid-14th century. The opulence of the rooms is breathtaking--every surface, including floors and ceilings is decorated with gilt or marble seemingly--but it's bewildering after awhile, and in our jet-lagged stupor, it began to blend together.

That is, until we got to the amazing Galleria della Carte Geografiche--a long hall with a gilt ceiling that immediately catches your eye only to lose it to the remarkable paintings of places, mostly Italian cities--old world maps rendered in oils of Liguria, Mantua, etc. Maybe it was the relief in the change of subject, but I thought these maps were the most miraculous things I saw.

The Sistine Chapel still to come...

Our adventure begins

We left Minneapolis on Thursday, September 27 for 2 weeks of travel, first Rome then Florence and back to Rome again. But first there was a short hop to Chicago and a nine-hour flight to get through (and as it turned out the occasional vocalized outbursts of 2 perhaps toasted Russians with whom we had exchanged seats--after first accidentally taking theirs--in a scene right out of a British romcom).

The flight was smooth but the plane was filthy, even run-down (yikes) and without the amenities that my most recent overseas flights have provided, such as large bulkhead areas where you can stand and stretch, those areas being reserved for the dapper and somewhat haughty, nearly all male flight attendants, who get away from the irritations of the passengers behind curtains that prohibited communal use. Nor were there personal video devices, which would be have been very useful to two ladies who rarely sleep on planes--take note Alitalia, we will not be using you again if we can help it.

But a relatively smooth and apparently safe enough flight later, we arrived in Rome to face the challenge of i musei Vaticani and St. Peter's Square on little to no sleep (stay tuned for more!)

Lisa and Loie are going to Italy soon!

Lois and I are off to Italy this week, and we'd like you to come along. We'll be one week each in Florence and Rome, learning to cook Tuscan-style and practicing our Italian on the locals. I've set up this blog so that our family and friends can enjoy the trip along with us.