Arrivederci, Roma

We went to the beach today, and it was absolutely a perfect way to end our time here. We went to a private beach, paid for beds, and had the best time ever. It was nice and quiet and warm and beautiful. We all got some nice sun, but no burns. :) We got back just in time to get all dressed up and walk over to Trastevere. We sat together on the steps to a church with an amazing view of the entire city and listened to the writing students read their favorite work from this trip to us. It was a really special experience, being able to eavesdrop on their thoughts and to see how incredibly talented my new friends are. We went to dinner at this amazing restaurant. 5 courses and we ate every one. We had this crazy plate of fried zucchini and pumkin flower and potato and mozzarella and it was so good! Then we got some spicy bean and noodle soup, then some penne pasta with bacon, then the best freaking meat I've tasted here. It was veal and roasted potatoes (kind of like the stuff I had a couple days ago, but 80 million times tastier). I wish I could have finished it, but by that time, I was super full. Tiramisu next (so good) and this strange other cakey thing that was reddish and tasted very much like red cough syrup with a very alchoholic zing. Meh. We didn't eat much of that. Then we had some coffee, which is going to be much needed tonight, since we're packing and waiting to leave at 3am tomorrow morning.
I can't believe we've already spent a month here, but it also seems like we've been here forever. Being back on American soil will be very strange.

No pictures tonight; I've already packed my card reader.

Ostia Antiqua

We hopped onto the metro early yesterday morning and then transferred out to the one that takes us to the beach. Ostia was the first colony of Rome, built on the banks of the Tiber right next to the coast. The Tiber isn't anywhere near the ruins anymore, because one of the Roman emperors actually re-routed the river in later years. It was really cool to see nearly an entire city's foundations still intact. We walked on the old roads (reconstructed with the original stones during Mussolini's time; but they weren't fitted together nearly as well the second time as they had been originally set) and went through the cemetary outside the city walls, then looked around the city. We had our tour guide from the Colusseum with us again, which was fun; she knows so much stuff! We got to see ancient public restrooms, bathhouses, apartments, shopfronts, and the corporate district. It was really hot and there wasn't a lot of shade, so by the time we were done, we were really ready to go back. Some people headed to the beach, but the rest of us headed back to Rome. I went with the professors to an amazing little place for lunch that makes basic, home-cooked Italian food. I had roasted veal with potatoes and it was so yummy!

Pictures:

A temple of the cult of Mithras. It was a lot cooler down there, but kinda damp and buggy.

Huge mosaic on the floor of the big bath complex in the city.

The street between two lines of apartment houses.

Overlooking the baths. The big grassy area you see was the gymnasium part of the baths.

Sistine Chapel

We went to the Vatican Museums today. It was actually a long, hot walk from Saint Peter's to the museum, so by the time we got there, we were ready for air conditioning. Bags x-rayed and metal detectors. It was a definite experience in crowd control. There's only one way you can walk through the museum, and they herd you like sheep. It was crowded and hot. The thing I noticed when I was looking at the art was how many people were hiding behind their cameras the whole time. I don't think any of them were really experiencing what they were looking at at all. We couldn't take pictures with flash throughout the museum, and no pictures at all in the Sistine chapel. I had my camera with me, but seriously, everything I could have taken pictures of is in a book, online, or somewhere easily accessible. I'll show you all some good pictures (better than I ever could have taken, with my little point and shoot) of the pieces that I got to see. I didn't want to waste my time snapping away while I could be studying how Raphael painted Michelangelo's face into the School of Athens or what colors Titian used as a Venetian Renaissance artist. I don't know, being here for a month has taught me a lot about what it means to look at art and experience old things. It all seemed a little irreverent. People were just zooming past the tapestries and the map frescos--and all the modern religious art. They wanted to get to the stuff "that mattered." It frustrated me a little, because that other art is still so important, and it's been completely informed by the stuff they'd all spent all of five minutes ogling at with their cameras. I think some of the modern stuff was more moving than some of the Rubens and Titians and Raphaels that we saw. Maybe I'm just an art history snob now. :)
Anyway, when we finally funneled into the Sistine Chapel, it was seriously like a zoo. We had been asked to be quiet and not take any pictures, and not only could I hear the crowd noise way outside of the chapel, but I could see the camera flashes, too. Wow. We've been to so many churches on so many holy places, so it felt really weird to be in such a beautiful place with people shouting and snapping pictures right and left. Well, we did get to see the famous Michelangelos on the ceiling and the near wall. It was pretty incredible.
When we left, I was with a group that wanted to stop for gelato, and I decided to head back to our hotel (it's really close to the Vatican, so I didn't mind walking). Amazing timing on my part. Because I'm walking along the wall, and there are 80 million Italian policemen along the road. And I get to Saint Peter's Square, and it's completely empty. The main street to the Vatican was lined with people, and as soon as I got there to look at what was going on, Obama's car and his entourage came down the street and swung around to the back entrance of the Vatican (where we entered for our tour a couple weeks ago). So I was a few hundred yards from our President, and in Rome. Ha.
Anyway, we came back and studied like maniacs for this style quiz we had to take this afternoon. I didn't do as well as I'd hoped. There were a few pieces on the powerpoint that everyone got wrong, because they were a little ridiculous. But at least we're done with schoolwork for this trip! Yay!
Tomorrow we go to Ostia Antiqua--ruins and some beach time! I can't believe we are three days away from being done. Seriously? Has it been a month already?

Keats and Obama. I mean, what?

So we went to the Spanish steps this morning so we could visit the Keats Shelly Memorial home. This was the house that Keats lived in during the last days of his life, before he died of tuberculosis. It's now been turned into a museum filled with books by him, Shelly, Lord Byron, and others, and paintings and letters and paraphanalia of all three. It was mildly interesting, but this day was mostly for the literature students on this trip. We felt a little bored and tired. But it was still good. Then we took the subway waaay south to the Piramide stop (I hadn't been there since that fateful day when we did the scavenger hunt) so that we could go to the Protestant Cemetery. That was my favorite part of the day, actually. There were trees and it was very very quiet (as one might imagine, being around dead people). We found some friendly cats and pet them, and tried to find the earliest instances of Christian imagery on the tombstones. I'll explain that: The reason that this cemetery exists was to have a place to bury "non-Catholic foreigners." Obviously, if you weren't Catholic, you couldn't be buried in a Catholic cemetery. In the earlist days of this particular cemetery, any sort of cross, mention of God, or salvation had been outlawed, because the Catholic church believed it was the one true church and therefore the protestants had no right to use any such symbols. The protestants were forced to have their burial services at night, otherwise the sight of a non-catholic priest blessing a burial would cause riots among the general Catholic public. Very interesting. Anyway, the earlist date I found on a headstone with a cross on it was 1845, but I'm sure there were a few that were older. But not many.
Came back, took a nap, and we'll be going to the Museum of Modern Art here in a few minutes. Oh, but I mentioned Obama because of what's happening tomorrow. I'll back up. For the past few days, we've been seeing people in suits driving around in dark cars in big groups, with police stopping traffic and pedestrians to let them through. We've been walking around at least twice when their little caravan has gone past. Helicopters have been watching the city streets, too. It's all felt very ominous, and we were all wondering what important person is in the city. Well, turns out it's Michelle Obama and her daughters. They've been sightseeing the past couple of days and I guess tomorrow President Obama and his family are having an audience with the Pope at the Vatican. Guess where our very last outing is tomorrow? Yeah. So I think Dr. Kresser went to the Vatican today to make sure that we'll still be able to get into the Museum part of the Vatican, because we have reservations. But it's incredibly ironic that the closest I'll probably ever be to the American President is in a foreign country. Ha.

Pictures:

A kitty that I managed to persuade to come over and be petted. He was really thirsty, so we turned the water on for him. He wasn't so sure he liked water on his whiskers, but he got over it.

"They change their sky, not their affections, who cross the sea."

-an inscription on a tombstone for someone born in America who died in Rome.

Yesterday and today

Yesterday we went to the Palazzo Barberini, a palace designed by Moderno and filled with lots of different paintings. There was Caravaggio and van Eyck and lots of other artists that I didn't recognize. It was beautiful. I stayed there way longer than I was expecting to. I saw that famous portrait of Thomas More in person! That was awesome, since A Man for All Seasons is one of my favorite plays. Also saw the portrait of Henry VIII that practically everyone's seen pictures of. It blows my mind how detailed that portrait is: every stitch of his clothing embroidery is clear and exact. Obviously, we couldn't take pictures, so I don't have any photos of yesterday. Or today. We went to the Galleria Borghese today. It was a very very long walk, and we thought we were going to be late. So we hustled. And now my feet aren't happy abou thtat. But we got to see amazing Bernini sculptures and tons of paintings (more Caravaggio :) ).
Funny story:
So I'm in the main painting gallery and I see an older couple sitting on some benches talking to each other and staring at me. I thought they were just thinking "oh look, another American girl," but then the guy gets up, comes over to me, and says, "I'm sorry, did we speak downstairs?" in this British accent. I said "no" and then he said, "But do you speak English?"
"Yes."
"Are you a student?"
"Yes, I am."
"Oh well then maybe you can answer a few questions for us..."
And we talked for a while about emerging perspective in early Renaissance paintings and how they restore old pieces. It was fun, because I actually knew what I was talking about. Turns out he's actually from California and he's an engineer, so the screwed up perspective that lots of early Renaissance paintings have was bugging him. Anyway, that was fun.
We waited forever for the tram so we could get back to the hotel, and they kicked us off to transfer. And we had to wait for the busdriver to take his break. And there was traffic. And it was gross. Pleh. But we're back. And I got pizza for lunch. All is well.
Review session tonight for our quiz we're taking on Friday. Wow, is it already Wednesday? We hardly have any time left here!

Bene, bene

We went to the beach today! It was a very long bus/metro/another metro ride there, but we finally got to the coast. We had to find a beach that wasn't members only, and ended up having to pay to get into a private beach (if you had seen the public beach, you would know why--crowded and gross). It was glorious. Lots of sun, and the water was perfect and warm. Such a good day. The ride back into Rome was so crowded and hot, though. That was probably the only unpleasant part of life. Still, I think this was a good Italian culture day. Being at the beach and everything felt very "un-American" today.
Now I've washed the saltwater out of my hair and will probably go to bed.

Tivoli

Today we went to Tivoli to visit the site of Emperor Hadrien's villa (just outside the city) and the Villa D'Este (inside the city). We all could have stayed there ALL DAY. I feel like the pictures will explain why. After three weeks in hot and dirty Rome, I got to hike a little and be with trees and birds and water. The site of Hadrien's villa was really cool and really big. We only got to see a little bit of it because we only had the bus for a short amount of time, but there were pools and the ruins of his personal baths, etc. There were humongous fish swimming in those pools--I guess they can get so big because they go undisturbed for so long. And we saw turtles, too!
We came back to Tivoli and ate lunch, then headed over to the next villa. The Villa D'Este was built in the Baroque period as a retreat inside the city, and it has the craziest fountains I've ever seen. They're all in this massive garden with an incredible view of the countryside (did I mention that Tivoli is on the side of a mountain?).
Pictures!


One of the big fountains in the gardens of the Villa D'Este


Meh, not the best picture of me, but here it is!


The view from the stairs to the garden at Villa D'Este

A pool at Hadrien's Villa.

We walk forever

We looked at more churches today with Caravaggio paintings, which were absolutely beautiful. He is by and large one of my favorite painters. After having taken an oil class, I think I can appreciate what he does with oils so much more.
Couldn't take pictures of these paintings, obviously, and I didn't think we needed any more images of vaulted ceilings laid in with gold. Mmyeah. I have images of a lot of them in my textbook, so I can show you all what I saw when I get back.
We walked around for a very long time today, shopping and looking around. We walked around the Pantheon area and then the Campo de Fiori. I ended up buying that leather bag that I've had my eye on for three weeks. It's beautiful and it's real and it smells wonderful and it's my one thing I'm bringing back. :)
Tomorrow we go to Tivoli to see Hadrien's Villa and a waterfall!! I am so extremely excited to get out of this city for a little while and see some nature. Yay! Don't worry, I'll take pictures on this outing.

Lightning!

SUPER thunderstorm tonight. Around 6:30 the clouds rolled in and all hell broke loose. Not really. But kind of. There was lightning lighting up the buildings every few seconds and the loudest, weirdest-sounding thunder I've ever heard. It was epic. The rain came down in torrents for a while, and people were running all over the streets to get out of it. Lots of people were standing in doorways just watching the lightning. It struck real close a couple of times, and I saw a couple forks come out of the clouds. I wish we had thunderstorms like that back at home. I just sat on the windowsill (inside, don't worry) watching it until it passed.
Tonight we went to the pumpkin place (one of our favorite restaurants) for Neenah's birthday. It was a lot of fun. I had thin pizza, and then we had this cool dessert : it had ricotta cheese and nutella on a crust-type thing. SO good.
When we got back, Hannah fixed my haircut, because it was getting nasty and long and weird in the back, and now I love it. I was starting to feel like a 9 year old boy. She's just wonderful. After that we sat in the hallway and watched So You Think You Can Dance on her laptop, because she gets better internet out there. Glorious.
That is all. I am going to bed. Tomorrow we're looking at Caravaggio!!

Baroque

Lots more churches yesterday (some pictures below), and a quiz that I think I did okay on. Extra credit covers a multitude of sins. :)
Big thunder and lightning last night! Like legit thunder. It went on for a while, and was really loud. It rained, but only for a few minutes, like usual. I got cold enough to stick on my jeans and a sweatshirt, though (I DID use that SPU sweatshirt, mom! Aren't you glad I packed it?).
Today we went to some Baroque churches, but I didn't take pictures this time. I wanted to try absorbing as much as I could, as opposed to hiding behind a camera all day. It was glorious. There was a beautiful white church that was simply constructed, but really interesting. There was a courtyard with white pillars and a mosaic fountain off of the main area of the church and a really cool mausoleum downstairs with a staircase that looked like a conch shell. It was pretty neat. The other two churches we went to were in the same area, but gilded and really overwhelming. The only think I like about the Baroque painting/ architecture style is the fact that it breaks the frame a lot and spills out into the rest of the room.
When we were getting off the bus, we met two girls who were doing the Semester at Sea program. They had heard us speaking English and asked us for directions, and ended up eating lunch with us at our favorite salad place. It was fun. One of them was from Georgia, and the other was from Hawaii (but she was going to school in Oregon). It was cool to touch base with other college kids after being in one group for so long. It made me miss my friends who live in Georgia and Oregon. Anyway, we pointed them in the direction of the Pantheon, and they left. They're going to Naples, next, then some really cool places like Turkey, Bulgaria, Egypt, and Morocco. I really want to do a program like that, but they were talking about how big their ship and their program is, and it's seriously like a cruise ship. With like...700 people. No thank you. That's just like a floating university. There are other programs out there that take only like 25 people and actually teach you how to sail. I feel like that would be more beneficial.
Yep, so it's Neenah's birthday today, so I think we're going to go out to dinner--a lot of us. Hopefully good food.
Some pictures from yesterday:


The tomb of Saint Ignatius: founder of the Jesuit order.

Yesterday

Yesterday we headed over to Trastevere to look at some early early Renaissance paintings. Trastevere has a little bit of a different feel than the rest of Rome; it's the only area of the city that has been consistently inhabited since the Middle Ages (and they're very proud of that fact). It's a little grittier and has more of a village feel. We visited a church built in honor of a woman saint who had been sentenced to beheading. According to legend, it didn't work (or like only partially? She had a slice in her neck). She died three days later. Apparently, saint's bodies aren't supposed to decompose, so when they found her tomb years later, her body had been preserved. An artist named Moderno saw the body when they recovered it, and he sculpted her as she supposedly looked when they opened the tomb. It was pretty interesting (picture below).
In this same church we saw the very first painting of the Renaissance. We piled into these tiny elevators and went up to the second level where there was a fresco on the wall by Cavellini (the first paintings of the Renaissance were originally credited to a man from Florence--Giotto--but his paintings were done after Cavellini's. But since the first art historians were from Florence, they were a little biased). It was pretty cool to look at--a style that straddled two different eras.
We went to another church that had some beautiful mosaics and domes. It's all running together now, we go to so many churches.
The last place we went to on our morning outing was a little palace with paintings by Raphael. I think my favorite part about that, though, was seeing the ancient graffiti that had been scribbled over the paintings when the Roman soldiers had barracked in the palace during the second sack of Rome (1527). They had very nice penmanship. :)
Last night we walked around before dinner and popped into a few shops. There was some intense thunder outside, and when we were exploring a little church, it rattled the windows. We visited the Pantheon again on our way over to get food. There were still so many people there, and it was 7:30 in the evening. Chinese food again for dinner! Sweet and sour pork for me.
I'll upload my pictures from today and post that later. We have a quiz tonight that I need to study for.

Pictures from yesterday:

Inside the Pantheon under the dome.

Moderno's depiction of that woman saint whose name I've forgotten.

The bridge over the river on the way to Trastevere.

Weekends

Since it's the weekend for us, not much has happened--it's been a very chill couple of days. Yesterday was fairly uneventful, and today was more of the same. It's a welcome break from the daily outings and the classes. Most of the group has gone to Florence for the weekend, so it's been pretty quiet around here (and I have the bed to myself!). Today my friend Summer and I took a walk to the north of Rome to the Villa Borghese gardens--a park of sorts. We did a little studying there and then headed back. It was quite a hike, so we were pretty tired when all was said and done. I had calzone for dinner at the place that serves that pumpkin risotto. It was lovely. We did some wandering after that, and Travis showed us a fantastic gelato place tucked way into a tiny corner on one of the backstreets. I had tiramisu and coffee (one of my favorite combinations)--and the tiramisu was legit tiramisu. I think they just make it and then keep it cold. Delicious. They also sold a raspberry gelato there that had sage in it? It was a little strange, and when I tasted some of Summer's, it made me think of Christmas. We weren't sure how we felt about it.
After two weeks, everyone's having a little spell of homesickness, which will pass, I'm sure. I think it's worse on the weekends, when we have nothing to distract us. I'm missing the Seattle lindy scene, other people are missing girlfriends or boyfriends, and all of us are missing clean Seattle air. :) Yep, and talking to the parentals on skype tonight was really nice.
Tomorrow is the last day of our weekend, and when everyone comes back from Florence, so everything will liven up very soon.

Saint Peter's

We got to sleep in (a little) today! Our tour of the Vatican was a little later in the day, so we left at 10am this morning instead of 8:30. We got to do an underground tour of the Vatican, which took us under the foundations of Constantine's church through the Necropolis (city of the dead) where a good number of mausoleums are being excavated. We got to see a few mausoleums and one Christian tomb with lots of beautiful symbolism in it. We weren't allowed to take pictures, but it probably wouldn't have turned out anyway, since it was so dark. It was hot and stifling down there, since they have to keep everything the right temperature and humidity to preserve the frescoes and mosaics down under the Vatican. It was pretty exhausting. We saw Peter's tomb, and all the layers that had been built over it. First was the trophy of Gaius, which was built over the tomb to protect and mark the grave. Then Constantine, a couple hundred years later, built a church around it and stuck his altar above Peter's tomb. The basilica today still has its altar above the tomb. We got to go very close to the original tomb--which not everybody gets to do--and saw the bones of Saint Peter inside. Most of the relics we hear about in Rome are laughable at best (the cradle Christ laid in, the post he was chained to during his flogging, etc.), but the information surrounding these bones' location and surroundings sems pretty legit. It was a little crazy to think that those were probably the remains of someone we read about in the New Testament all the time.
When we were finally able to see the church itself, we were exhausted, and all of the ornamentation inside was a little overwhelming. There were so many tourists there, it was a little like a zoo. I don't think we appreciated that part of the visit so very much. We were definitely ready to get out of there to get something to eat. We found a little place across the river that had a painting on one wall of Snow White's cottage and all of the little Disney animals. It was a little weird, and there was the witch on the menu. Aside from that, the food was really good. I had lasagna for lunch, and linguine al pesto for dinner. Both good choices. Gelato from this really amazing place by the Pantheon (the kiwi stuff tasted like real kiwi. It was phenomenal!), and then home. We have a three-day weekend this week, and I'm really looking forward to sleeping in.

A few pictures...

PS...

We had Chinese food tonight! So good. I had chicken in orange sauce on rice, which was wonderful. We were all dying for some food that wasn't pasta or salad, and this place is really close--near the bus stop and the cat sanctuary.

Yum.
That is all.

Basilica ad infinitum

We did the early pilgrimage churches today. The first two we visited were dedicated to two sisters who risked their lives to give Christian martyrs a proper burial. They later became martyrs themselves, and their remains are supposedly buried in the second church we visited. The last one we visited was on the top of the Esquiline hill in Rome, very large, and covered in a Baroque facade. It was massive on the inside. All of the basilicas today had amazing mosaics on the apse and triumphal arch in either the early Christian or Byzantinian style. It was a lot of gold and sparklies. The intense opulence of these churches is starting to wear on me. It's like trying to eat something really good after you're already really really full. It makes me wonder how much of that money could have been used to feed the people on the streets or house the homeless.
Tomorrow we go to Saint Peter's, which I'm really excited about. There are going to be so many people there. We have a guided tour, though, so I'm sure we'll learn more than if we were just one of the herd.
A few of us were talking today about how much we miss Mexican food. And Chinese food. And Thai food. Basically American food. It's very strange being in such an ethnically undiluted place, as opposed to the crazy patchwork of people that is the US. You can definitely tell that there is very strong Italian blood in many of these people--there's a look. That's taken some getting used to; I guess in Seattle, we're used to just seeing people. But here it's very easy to tell who's Italian, who's German, etc. Really weird.

Anyway, just a couple pictures from today!

Sorry about the blur. No flash, and I had nothing to stabilize with. This was the mosaic on the apse of the San Maggiore church that we went to last.

Second church--the one that held the bodies of the saint sisters.

The first church of the morning. We met a really nice guy there who took us around and told us lots of stuff about its history. On the floor of this church in the stone is the pattern of the walls of the church this one is built on top of. Pretty cool. This church had a beautiful mosaic on the apse, too, and we actually got to go upstairs and see it up close.

And here it is, up close. Only 10 apostles because the person who restored this church in the 16th century had his own design in mind and just cropped the original mosaic.

Big ol' chunk of reading to do and a nap.

"Ciao bella"

Today started off slow. We went to a few churches this morning and walked around. The first was a church where Constantine was supposedly baptized, according to legend. Another was the Saint John Lateran, which was the pope's home church before Saint Peter's. It's huge, and was built after the second sack of Rome. There was mass going on when we entered, and the choir's singing just echoed off the walls forever. It was so beautiful, I could have stayed there all day. It was really amazing to think about how common belief has united thousands of people in that building for hundreds of years. The third one all of us went to had three layers of churches underneath it, but we couldn't take pictures inside the church at all, which was disappointing. It was my favorite one of the day. The layers of churches underneath were a lot like the catacombs; very humid and cool. We got to see the old early Christian church one layer down, and then underneath that was the Roman house-church where Christians used to meet back in the day. It was so interesting. There were beautiful frescoes over the ceiling here, too.
After we were done for the day, a few of us went with Dr. Kresser to another church that was the first to be put on the Roman Forum. It was very small, and kind of hot, but it looked over into the temple of Romulus in the Forum through a window.
First quiz tonight. I think we all did pretty well, but it was weird taking care of "school stuff" while we're in Rome. These days are flying by. In a couple more days we'll have been here for two weeks. What? Really?
Had my first Calzone here tonight! We ate at a restaurant on the Campo de Fiori. We had a couple street performers come up and ask for money (actually, that's a really normal thing around here. We see beggars on church steps all the time, and street musicians and vendors are pretty agressive. I feel bad saying no, since Italy's unemployment rate is so hideous, but you know. Can't give money to everybody. Plus, I hardly ever carry change.) Anyway. The calzone, it was really good, but Roman prosciutto is very salty. I'm so baffled how little water they drink here, and yet all of their food has so much salt in it. Their insides must be well-preserved, by now. Hm. Went to the store for lunch today, and people started speaking Italian to me. It's funny how you instantly lose tourist status when you explore by yourself or with just one other person (well, so long as you're not wearing sandals with socks and a big floppy hat and a camera strung around your neck). I found peanut butter! Bottom shelf, behind the Nutella. I had peanut butter sandwiches and yogurt for lunch. Beautiful. Tonight we went back to this really amazing gelato place we found by the Pantheon: 3 flavors for 2.20 Euro. Pretty amazing. Coffee, tiramisu, and chocolate together is the stuff of legend. We hung out at the Piazza Nuvona for a while, and this old man came up to us and started to sing to us. It was pretty hilarious. He talked with us for a while, practiced his English. He had a really hard time saying "month" and "Mexico," which was slightly amusing. Then he told us all about how much he loved his mother and when he looked up at the stars, he thought of her. Or something. He liked his mom a lot, I'll just paraphrase. He was trying to be such a charmer, and talked our ears off. We finally managed to leave, but he still had to say "Ciao bella" to me and give me a traditional Italian goodbye. It was funny.
Some pictures from today (they're backwards from the order we went there):

Looking down into the temple of Romulus from a window in the Cosmos and Damien church.

The inside of the church of Cosmos and Damien, built in the Roman Forum.

The San Clemente courtyard.

Outside of San Clemente--where the layers of churches were.

The dome of one of the chapels in Saint John Lateran.

We visited the church during Mass. We were still able to look at the church when we walked through the ambulatory, which is how I got this really quick, blurry picture.

The ceiling of Saint John Lateran, the church Constantine built as the pope's home church. It was the pope's home church for quite a while. It's called Lateran because the church was built on property confiscated from a treasonous family with the name Laterus (sp?).

Outside the pope's old palace. This was an apse (rounded end of a room) that would have been part of the old triclinium (dining room). This mosaic shows Jesus blessing the pope and Constantine and Peter blessing another pope and Charlemagne. Intense church-state statements, here.

The dome of the small church where Constantine was supposedly baptized.

The tub thing where, according to legend, Constantine was baptized.

"We met you at the cat sanctuary!"

Today felt very long, but we really were only out for four hours-ish. The bus ride there and back took up a lot of the trip. I was standing for most of the way there and both buses back in Rome. But I think that was one of the most interesting parts of the outing. On our way there, I was standing next to a young businessman who was learning--of all things--Spanish in a workbook. That got me thinking about how much easier things would be if everyone was speaking Spanish and not Italian in this city. 3 years is a long time to be studying a language--well, relatively speaking. Relative to my knowlege of Italian, that is. It would be so nice to be able to communicate properly! Walking around with Italian swirling around you is like "beautiful white noise," according to one of my friends, and I would agree. Most of the time I just tune it out, because they're talking so fast there's no way I'd understand any of it. But being here is like walking around in the UN: I've heard Spanish, French and German (frequently), Russian, Japanese, and some others I've probably forgotten. It's cool being able to recognize the sounds of these languages--it makes Rome a wonderful culture clash.
So when we got off the bus after riding past the old city walls (Aurelian walls built by Aurelian, not Marcus Aurelius), we walked a few blocks to the Saint Priscilla catacombs. The top part is now a monastery, so it was felt peaceful and small while we were waiting to go underground. Tidbit of awesome: the catacombs in Rome (or outside of Rome during the time of the early Christians) were not where Christians "hid" to escape persecution, contrary to popular belief. They were built to house the bodies of Christians who had died; it was considered unclean in the city to be around dead bodies. So most of these catacombs are outside the city walls. The catacombs themselves were just--there's hardly words. We were forbidden to take pictures or video at all, so I'll just have to describe it. We walked through this intense metal door which our guide shut behind us, and then down some narrow, spiraling stairs. You could already smell the sort of underground, cave-like smell before we had even entered the catacombs. The catacombs themselves were dark, narrow, and filled floor to ceiling with spaces for the dead. It was a little cooler down there, but very humid (90% humidity, our guide said). The ceilings still had the marks where the original creators of these tunnels had scraped the rock and clay away, and the bricks that were holding up the ceiling were just as old. Our tour guide kept saying, "17 hundred years old" about everything, and it was true. Most of the things that we saw underground were the original carvings, paintings, etc. We were able to see original frescoes (paintings that were created while the plaster was still wet) that had decorated the family tombs (mausoleums)--they were paintings that ancient Christians put up there with their own hands! Pictures of Lazarus, Jonah, Noah, the Wise Men who came to see Jesus, and other well-known stories were still on the ceiling in much brighter colors than we expected. One of the most well-preserved rooms had bright red paint on the ceiling--it was beautiful. The coolest frescoe we got to see was the oldest known depiction of Mary with baby Jesus. It was on the ceiling as a part of a larger painting, but in the corner is one of the first ever Madonna and Child paintings. It was--for lack of a better phrase--really cool.
First thing I noticed when we got down there was how small the spaces for the bodies were. They looked like Navy barracks carved out of stone, but shorter in length. Turns out that people's bodies would have actually fit in those; they were literally smaller and shorter in those days. Most people attribute the size difference to nutritional things. It was really interesting. None of the open spaces had any bones, because they had been removed. Outside of the tourist path, however (in the spaces unlit by electric lamps and roped off from guided tours), our guide told us that there were still the bones and bodies of those buried there. There were a few tombs still unopened where we were walking: tiles covered the opening and then were sealed with Roman cement--very strong. And there were so many tombs: 40,000, all told. We only went through a very small section of the tunnels, but there were so many more that would have been easy to get lost in.
It was such a weird and cool experience to walk through the tunnels where early Christians had been, look at the paintings they had created, and read the names of people they had loved. It was like coming home, in a non-creepy sort of way. And even the graffiti (because there was a lot of it in places, with the names and dates of people who had come through in years past) was a little ironically beautiful, becuase this place has seen so many people come and go. I saw graffiti from 1869 and 1954. It was awesome.
Then we left and went to a few small churches. The first one was a mausoleum attached to the ruins of the first official church building (built by Constantine). The mausoleum was for Constantine's daughter, and has been converted into a church now. The second church was dedicated to Saint Agnes, who was a martyr revered for her purity. Under the altar of this church we got to see her sarcophagus, where her actual body still lies. Her head is elsewhere (she was beheaded, so I'm sure the churches wanted to get the most out of their holy relics...).

Some pictures from the day:

Mosaic in the chuch of Saint Agnes by the altar.

Ceiling of the Saint Agnes church.

Mausoleum of Constantine's daughter. It was actually pretty small in there, and dark.

Ceiling around the dome. Those designs you see are mosaics.

Dome in the Mausoleum with frescoes.

The sarcophagus would have sat right where the altar is today.

The site of the earliest building created expressly for Christian purposes.

Outside of the mausoleum.

The atrium-type place where we waited for our catacomb tour.

It had a nice view.

On the bus back, a couple people in our group recognized someone they'd met at the cat sancutary, and they called to him from across the bus, "Hey, we met you at the cat place!" It was really rather amusing. We stopped at a restaurant that specialized in salads, and I had one with avocado and salmon and corn. And then we all took 2 hour naps. It was glorious. I think we're going to get food, now. I want risotto! :)

Morning sun and white sheets

First day that I didn't go out at all today. I woke up real early to talk to the family on Skype and then did homework until kingdom come. I wasn't feeling 100%, probably just because we'd been eating nothing but pasta and sandwiches for a week. I had a salad for lunch and I think things are returning to normal. We got a really chill dinner at the grocery store down the street, Di per Di, and now we're hanging out in our room. It's been a very sleepy day--maybe that's a good thing, since tomorrow we start another week of class. I think all of us are going to bed early. that sounds like the best thing ever--we're such a wild bunch, I know.
Last night we had a really good dinner at another relatively inexpensive restaurant last night--I got some pretty awesome salmon pasta. Mmm.
Tomorrow we go to the catacombs in way north Rome. I think it'll be really interesting. Look for pictures tomorrow!

Potato pizza

So yesterday was my first legit meal at a sit-down restaurant in Italy. We're poor college students, and we usually get breakfast, lunch, and dinner at little cafes and cheap places. But last night we had dinner at a restaurant with "pumpkin" in the name. I had pumpkin risotto, and it was quite possibly the best stuff ever. I thought it would taste weirder, but it really didn't. It made me think of the risotto we eat at home--only orange. It was SO good. It made me want to eat like that the whole time we were here. And it was relatively cheap, too. Only 8,50 euro.
Today was an uber lazy day, too. I woke up briefly this morning to thunder and rain. We slept in for the first time in a week and then headed to the nearby Piazza to study. There was this little baby there with his parents that kept staring at me and waving. I finally got a smile out of him--he looked so serious. So cute! It's been grey and a little chilly all day, and I hear big thunder now. It might rain again, soon.

We left when the sky started looking like this.

A building by the fountain.

One of the Bernini fountains in the piazza two seconds away from our hotel.

We went to VIP for lunch today (Very Italian Pizza--haha, that sounds real authentic). I had something with some salty sausage things on it and there were mashed potatoes on top of the crust? It was a really strange texture. But I mean it was really good, just odd. I have no idea what we're going to do tonight, because I imagine it's going to be pretty cold. Tomorrow is the last day of our weekend (we have weird weekends--Sunday and Monday off), so I'll probably head over to the Villa Borghese to do homework. I have never been less motivated to do schoolwork in my life. Bleh.