Addio Italia!

(Post for Tuesday, September 27, 2016)

Back in Rome and I wish we could stay here forever! Or at least a few more weeks. But, alas, we must leave tomorrow.

With only a half day in Rome after all of our train travel from Sorrento, we again tried to pack the day full. We planned to spend the afternoon in the northern portion of Rome so we decided to head out that way to find lunch before visiting a couple museums. When we got off the subway we opted to take the scenic route through the Borghese Gardens that our GPS recommended, but once we got on the other side there were no restaurants to be found. So we decided just to go straight to the Villa Giulia National Etruscan Museum since we were short on time. This was probably a bad idea because the collection is actually much larger than I had anticipated and hunger started to set in pretty soon after our arrival. We pushed on, but our eyes soon began to glaze over. We manage to hold it together long enough to see a few interesting pieces though.

We saw this terracotta sarcophagus which is known worldwide as the "Sarcofago degli Sposi" (or "Sarcophagus of the Spouses") and has a "twin" displayed in the Louvre Museum. The founder of the Villa Giulia Museum purchased this work in over 400 fragments! I cannot imagine putting together that puzzle.

We also came across these gold sheets from the 6th century BCE which were important documents for understanding the Etruscan language when they were found in 1964. Two are written in Etruscan, while the third is written in Phoenician and corresponds to the longer of the two Etruscan inscriptions, though it apparently is not a literal translation.

The museum had an extensive collection of Etruscan pottery, which I was rather surprised by; I tend to only think of terracotta sarcophagi when I recall the Etruscans from my Art History studies. It seems they had quite a strong connection with the Greeks and Greek pottery traditions.

After awhile the hunger became too much and we left in search of food. By this time it was pushing 3:00pm and, being rather far from the touristy center of Rome, many of the restaurants were closing for the afternoon. We eventually found a cute little cafe where the pastries looked delicious, but which served some pretty forgettable reheated pasta and chicken on the restaurant side. Nonetheless, it was enough sustenance to get us moving again.

We were off to the Borghese Gallery where we had a 5:00pm reservation, but had been advised to arrive a half hour early to pick up our tickets. Reservations are required for entry, and you definitely have to reserve in advance. I had such issues trying to reserve through their website from the states; the transaction would not go through each time I tried. I tried again a week prior to our visit while we were in Florence and it was at that time that it struck me to try paying with PayPal which finally worked! I'm so glad it did and that I didn't put it off any longer; when we arrived for our reservation they had signs out saying they were completely booked for the next week!

From the restaurant we hopped on the Metro back one stop, which put us closer to the entrance of the Gallery than hiking a half an hour back through the Borghese Gardens. Once at the stop we had to take a series of escalators up to ground level. At the first escalator a man with a dolly got on ahead of us followed by a woman. The dolly scratched along the metal sides and gave us momentary pause, but started moving along fine so we go on. We should have listened to our intuition because at the top the dolly got stuck. The guy was trying to force it out when the escalator forced the woman into him. The whole thing lurched forward and I thought it had broken free, but then it was stuck again and I was barreling towards them. I panicked and tried to jump up onto the handrail to make it over them, but my purse, which was slung across my body, was still hanging down and hit the stuck group and I heard a loud ripping of fabric as Russ (who had thought more quickly to jump entirely over the side of the escalator) caught me around the middle and prevented me from somersaulting face-first off the end of the escalator. What an insane experience! It was like being in a movie and must have looked ridiculous. Discovering that nobody was really hurt I set about looking for the source of the ripping noise. I was terrified that the actual fabric of my dress had torn. I discovered that it was only a popped waist seam. Phew! That is an easy fix and was covered by the belt I was wearing. So on we went, only a little more shaken than we had been a few minutes before.

We arrived a half hour before we needed to, so we found a bench in the courtyard and relaxed for a little while before picking up our tickets and grabbing a coffee in their cafeteria. We briefly met up with our friend Babette, who had hoped she might be able to join us, but instead made a reservation for later in her trip since the gallery was fully booked. It was nice to see her another time before we left Italy, even if it was only a quick chat. We then headed into the gallery, which holds a collection of exquisite Bernini sculptures and paintings by Caravaggio, Raphael, and Titian. The first floor, which houses the sculptures, quickly became Russ's favorite attraction in all of Italy! (I have learned on this trip that he is quite the fan of Bernini's sculpture, which I did not know before.) I can't fault him though; these sculptures were incredible, especially the way he has depicted Daphne's hands and feet turning into trees!

Russ was much less taken with the upstairs picture gallery, but there were certainly some great paintings. I was particularly drawn to this one, which upon viewing from across the room I instantly knew was a Veronese. I am familiar with a painting of Apollo and Daphne by Veronese in which the arm of Apollo and the leaves are depicted so similarly to this one that they had to be by the same hand. What do you think?

(Apollo and Daphne by Veronese, San Diego Museum of Art)

We left the gallery and took a leisurely stroll through the Borghese Gardens back toward the Metro. It really is a lovely public park!

After a much less eventful trip on the Metro we headed back to our hotel, but first we stopped at a gelateria called the Green Pistachio for one last scoop of gelato before our Italian vacation comes to an end.

Pompei Scavi

This morning we hopped on the Circumvesuviana and took it halfway back around the Bay of Naples to the Pompeii excavation (scavi) site. We arrived about 9:30am and there were quite a few tour groups arriving at the same time.
We purchased our tickets, entered the site, and were immediately impressed by the size of the town. With the gorgeous view of Mt. Vesuvius in the background it is no wonder the unsuspecting citizens of Pompeii built their town here. It is also crazy to think that this town was a port town right on the Bay of Naples until the eruption from Mt. Vesuvius filled in the bay.

We used Rick Steves' walking tour to guide ourselves through the immense complex and definitely got a lot more out of the visit than if we'd walked through on our own. There is so much to see that I think it would have been beneficial to have a tour guide, but this made a good second option.  For instance, we learned that these stones served two functions: 1) as crossing stones when the streets were flooded daily to clean them and 2) to indicate traffic flow: one stone was a one-way street, two stones a two-way street, and three stones was a busy thoroughfare. All chariots were manufactured with standard axle measurements so the wheels always fit around these stones!

We also learned that this type of stone indicated a pedestrian-only zone. 

As did this sign. (The stone one, not the plastic sign that I could not manage to get out of the frame...)

We discovered that many Pompeiians did not cook in their small houses so there were fast food counters such as these all over. The holes in the counters held pots of food and there are still grooves in the stone doorways where the shop's accordion doors closed. Pretty neat!

We saw the House of the Fawn, and I was really glad we had made the sidetrip to Naples yesterday to see the original statue and mosaics.

We also visited the Forum Baths, which were cool. There were three parts that one would visit after working out at the attached gymnasium: the caldarium (hot bath), tepidarium (warm bath), and frigidarium (cold bath). There were also separate sections for men and women. I most enjoyed learning about how the caldarium worked. There is a double floor, which you can see by peering down into one of the floor grates, and it was heated from below. There are also double walls with terra-cotta tiles that held the heat. The caldarium contained a large fountain on one end (pictured) that poured water onto the heated floor creating steam. In order to keep the condensation from dripping down onto peoples' heads, the ceiling was fluted, which carried the water down the walls. Such ingenuity!

We made it about 2/3 of the way through the walking tour before we began encountering large sections of the complex that were closed off for restoration and we were no longer able to continue the tour. It was probably a good thing though. It was noon by that time and getting quite warm and as we turned back onto the main thoroughfare we could not believe how crowded it had gotten! The number of tour groups must have increased by tenfold. So we decided that it was time to leave and headed back to the Circumvesuviana and back to Sorrento.

Before our trip we had been told by so many people that the island of Capri was incredible and not to be missed, so we decided to take the ferry across the bay for an afternoon visit. What we learned is that you really need a full day to experience it. The ferry ride is about 20 minutes each way (and rather expensive- €72 round-trip for two people!) and leaves about every 20 minutes. Our timing was off so we ended up waiting nearly 20 minutes to catch the next ferry. We had wanted to give ourselves as much time there as possible so we opted to eat lunch on Capri rather than before the boat ride. This may have been a good thing because I get very seasick, even on motion sickness medicine, but it also caused me to be on the verge of hangry when we arrived. Thus, we ate at one of the very touristy places right off the dock. I was so glad that I had ordered our food in Italian because we had the really upsetting experience of understanding that the waiters were yelling across the tables rudely making fun of another tourist. Granted, Capri was also one of the only places that we saw tourists not even making any sort of effort to speak Italian and assuming everyone spoke English, and that must be a frustrating daily occurrence for these people. But, still, the experience of watching their attitude and reaction was just kind of gross.

It felt like it took forever to get our food, and after quickly scarfing it down with the intention of wandering around for awhile before catching the ferry back, we realized that we weren't actually in Capri town and in order to get there we had to take a funicular. By the time we purchased tickets and rode the funicular up to the town we had very little time before we intended to take the ferry back to Sorrento for an evening commitment. We took a quick turn around the ritzy shopping area, which was far too rich for our budget, and then waited in line to take the funicular back down to the dock, making it just in time to take the ferry back.

Capri was a pretty place, but, sadly, I don't think we had the opportunity to experience the wonder that so many people had shared with us. It would have been much better to have dedicated a day to the visit and to have been able to see Villa Jovis, the ruins of Emperor Tiberius' villa, and the second town of Anacapri, situated higher up on the island.

In any case, we returned to Sorrento with plenty of time for our evening commitment: a gelato making class! This class turned out to be more of a demonstration than a hands-on class, but it was still fun, and I got to scoop the lemon gelato that we made out of the gelato machine. (Small pleasures!) We left the class with certificates, recipes, and free cones of gelato. Their almond gelato was absolutely the best gelato we had in all of Italy! (Though with regards to the other flavors I still think Suso in Venice is my new favorite gelato shop!) Now we just need to acquire the right tools and we'll be making gelato back home!

Andiamo a Napoli

Today we packed up and headed off to Sorrento. Our high-speed train ended in Naples and before we caught the commuter Circumvesuviana around the Bay of Naples to Sorrento, we decided to store our bags and head into the city for Neapolitan pizza! We went to a recommended pizza place about a 15 minute walk from the train station. It was very good, but not our favorite pizza of the trip like I thought it might be!

We then headed back to the train station to catch the metro to the National Archeological Museum, which houses the artifacts that were excavated from Pompeii. We thought this would be very straight forward as our guidebook thoroughly laid out directions: purchase ticket at tabaco shop, validate in little yellow machine, get on line 2 (which is faster than line 1), go one stop, and walk five minutes to museum. Easy. So we purchase our metro tickets, we walk past all the yellow validation machines for line 1, and we get to line 2 and there are no validation machines... Being the worrier that I am, I was too concerned by this to get on the train. After looking everywhere for a validation machine we finally found a police officer who told us that the tickets we had bought are only good for line 1, not line 2. What? There are different tickets for each line of the metro system?? That makes no sense at all. Thank you guidebook for totally missing it on that one! The police officer did not know enough English to tell us how to purchase the correct ticket, and after some frustrating searching we gave up and found a taxi. This in and of itself was an experience. If you've been to Italy you may have noticed that there are no lines marking lanes on the roads. If room permits, they make two lanes, or three if it's really busy, and they zip around fast. As soon as we got in the car we were instructed not to wear seatbelts (there weren't any buckles anyway) so I just held onto mine for dear life as our driver weaved around the traffic. As insane as it all is, the traffic functions very smoothly. It's like organized chaos. 

We made it to the museum alive and only a little frazzled, but we were thoroughly exhausted. It was really cool to see all the mosaics from Pompeii, especially before we visited (more on that later!), but I think we would have benefitted from a guided tour. It's actually quite a large collection even though it seemed that half of the museum was closed for renovation!

We used our metro line 1 ticket from earlier to get back to the train station (at least it wasn't a waste of money!) and made our way to Sorrento. We were so glad to get there. It was much more calm and relaxed than Naples. We checked in to our hotel and found that we had been given a free upgrade to a room with a balcony on the Main Street! We then took a relaxing stroll through the town, looking at the shops, and stopped for dinner at Inn Buffalito. Their fondue sorrentina was soooo good! It was like deconstructed pizza with the mozzarella fondue in tomatoe sauce and foccacia bread for dipping. Yum!

Tomorrow we explore Pompeii!

Non tutte le ciambelle riescono col buco

Title translation: Not all doughnuts come out with a hole
Meaning: Things don't always turn out as planned

Russ has come down with a bit of a cold so we decided to take it easier on ourselves today and follow a path along the metro. Rome's metro system skirts around the ancient core, which makes it inconvenient for most tourists, except when getting to the Vatican. However, there are many less popular sites on the outskirts that are close to metro stops.

We began the day with a stroll past Circus Maximus, now a public park (though one might just call it an open field), to the Church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin. Here is housed the Bocca della Verità (the Mouth of Truth) made famous by Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck in Roman Holiday. We lined up with all the tourists (see below, it was ridiculous) and stuck our hands in the mouth. We thankfully both came away with two hands so we must not be liars.

We walked back to the metro stop only to find that it was closed. I should have asked then why the station was closed, but, sadly, I didn't think my Italian comprehension was good enough to understand the response to "why is the metro stop closed?" so we decided to walk up to the next stop at the Colosseum, which we knew wasn't terribly far. We finally get there and discover that that station is closed as well. Great. At this point we didn't know whether just this line or the entire metro was closed, but we were now about two thirds of the way to the next stop in our plan so we decided to keep walking. 

After a very warm and slightly sweaty walk we made it to Saint Peter-in-Chains Church, famous for Michelangelo's sculpture of Moses housed there. There must be a campaign of restoration taking place across Rome right now because this too was undergoing restoration. Despite the scaffolding, it was still neat to see.

At this time it finally dawned on me to check the metro website, rather than checking Google for articles about the metro closure. This was much more productive and we discovered that only line B was closed. We just needed to make it up to the next station which transferred to line A. And so we decided to walk... A very hot half hour later we arrived at the metro station that would allow us to switch to line A. We had lunch plans at 1:00pm so we decided that we had to skip our next two stops and go straight to the Spanish Steps.

We arrived at the Spanish Steps and immediately remembered it was a Saturday; it was packed! We fought the crowds for a space on the steps and took the requisite tourist selfie. We wandered around the shopping triangle in this area and found a Laudree shop so of course we purchased macarons!

We then met up with Babette from our Vatican tour yesterday for lunch. She is so fun and so knowledgeable about Rome; we really enjoyed hanging out with her. Following lunch she took us to her favorite coffee shop, La Casa del Caffe Tazza d'Oro near the Pantheon, and then walked with us to Piazza Navona so that Russ could see the Bernini sculpture. We had the best time wandering the back streets of Rome without having to use a map and actually being able to look around and take everything in.

After enjoying the Piazza for awhile we headed back to our hotel to rest before our nighttime tour of the Colosseum! We found a little tea shop around the corner for dinner and I had super yummy quiche for a change of pace from pasta and pizza.

A bit before 8:40pm we picked up our tickets from the Colosseum box office and queued up for our guided tour of the underground. It was so cool to be able to go out onto the section of stage that has been rebuilt and to go underneath into underpinnings of the arena, but I think it was an even better experience to do the tour at night when all the tourist crowds are gone and the darkness gives the place an eerie feel.

Every day on the way to our hotel we have passed this ruin site, wondering what it was. Well on our tour we discovered that this was the only Gladiator training center that was connected directly to the Colosseum through an underground tunnel that now runs underneath a modern road. Neat!

Tomorrow we take off for Sorrento, but we kind of wish we could stay in Rome!