Rome, also for the second time, a long time...

(Mon. Nov. 30th to Thu., Dec. 3rd)

So I went to Rome with my dad and Chris in 2002, same time I went to Florence before. That time we spent I think a total of 5 days there. Did a ton. But DIDN'T do a ton also. So much to see! So this trip was 9 days in Rome. Wow. I felt pretty comfortable making my way around by the time I was done, especially considering the amount of small winding streets. Hard to navigate until you start understand where you are, where you need to be, and which direction you're pointing, which isn't always easy.

We left Florence in the early afternoon (I think) and got to Rome in the evening, on the train. I know many people slept or talked- I took the entire trip to work on my pictures from Florence and my remaining schoolwork that was still ridiculously due.

We found out we were staying at two separate bed and breakfasts, nearby-ish, owned by the same lady, Michelle. Who was very Italian, pretty, probably dyed jet-black hair, and wore expensive tight jeans and lots of perfume. She was really nice though. I told her I spoke a bit of Italian, but she seemed to be surprised every time of the few, that I actually spoke any Italian.

Anyway, after finding our hotel (which you'll see pictures of later) we all met up that night to begin our sightseeing. I knew our hotel was near one of my favorite landmarks in the city, the Castel Sant'Angelo (castle of the holy angel, which would be Michael, the archangel). AND, look what a great night shot my camera took!

This castle was the final destination of stuff in Angels and Demons. Sorry if I just ruined that for anyone. It served as a dungeon/prison many times, and also a papal refuge- there's a continuous wall with tunnel in it, going all the way to the Vatican, presumably to the Pope's room, so he could escape to relative safety if need me. Pretty cool.

Here's the view just down the river. There's a bridge extending direction into the castle, that crosses the river Tiber, which runs down towards...yeah that's St. Peter's. Another cool night photo. Thanks, camera. I think I briefly paused to snap this while my classmates set their cameras perfectly still on the edge of the bridge :) Nice reflections too!

Crossing the bridge, we were walking towards the main part of central Rome, and I turned back to get a good shot of the castle, with the archangel up top. There's an older, original statue thats also inside, that I saw with Tiffany when we took a tour later. Great looking bridge too. The castle was built in many stages and layers, which is kiiiiinda evident here...

A short walk later we wandered (well, we were led, by our professor) into Piazza Navona- also featured prominently in Angels and Demons. At this point I had a loose concept, at best, about where things were, relative to each other, from my previous trip. But I learned :)

You can see the fake dove up at the top of the obelisk. LOTS of obelisks in this city, and most of them were stolen from Egypt centuries ago by Roman armies. How in the bloody hell they got them back is beyond me. Okay, I actually know...they floated them on logs...apparently...?

Nice to be back in piazzas instead of plazas/plaças in Spain :) From Piazza Navona, we walked to nearby Campo dei Fiori- "Field of the flowers". I guess it originally was that :) I don't remember who the statue was...I should know.

But really, now, its the #1 place to go to BUY flowers, from vendors during the day. It was a completely open piazza at night, with restaurants and outdoor seating ringing it, but during the day was FULL of vendors of flowers and food and DVDs and Venetian glass jewelry that was cheap but really pretty. So I bought some of it for someone pretty ;)

That was pretty much that night- just a brief tour to get us acquainted, see a few things, and then we got let go to get a bite to eat. I don't remember where I ate that night, but Rome is somewhat expensive (not THAT bad if you're careful) and I was saving money knowing I was gonna go BROKE when Tiffany got there and we ate gelato twice a day :)

So here's the bed and breakfast. A few floors up, on an old service elevator with the accordion metal door, that was so slow. This hallway is it, for the place, though I think she had two floors of rooms. This floor there were only three rooms, and she lived somewhere back through the kitchenette through a door that said no guests.

Here was our room.

A double bed in the middle with two rollaway type beds on the sides of it. And not much remaining space to move around :) The comforter/quilt things matched the curtains, and the walls were the same kind of...burnt peach color. A little overpowering... But I slept okay, once I got the slippery annoyingly silky bedcovering folded up and put away. It was a couple days of the lady remaking our beds before she realized I really didn't want that thing put back on the bed every time.

The next morning- hit the ground running with Alexander. Here was a sweet old Fiat Cinquecento (500), the old version of the new car that you'll see later, that they're bringing to the US this fall. I loved them. Tiny and Italian.

I just love the cobblestone EVERYWHERE.

Here below is uh, some cool shelves and glasses in some store.

And like I said, back in Campo dei Fiori, the Venetian glass necklaces. Some of em were kinda ugly, but some were really awesome.

Here's probably the smallest church in the city of Rome.

This was a piazza, since any space that was not strictly street was Piazza Something, as called out by a plaque on the wall of an adjoining building. But these buildings angled in towards this tiny church entrance...so weird!

We kept going, and between being in Campo dei Fiori, and walking by these ruins that were on Via Argentina, I knew we were really close to the hotel I stayed with Chris and my dad in 2002. But I couldn't find it...yet. No worries :)

These ruins are cool because I think Alexander said they were discovered during attempts at either street work or subway construction, and they just kept unearthing more and more.

There were signs labeling things that they presumed to be temples and such. There were a million cats living down there. It was weird. It was also a very active site- still lots of excavation going on, with pieces of columns and other things laid on the ground waiting to be reassembled. And you could see that the ruins extended under the streets we were on and even under the buildings across the street. Rome is basically a city on a city on a city...they used to just bury and build on top. Which is why the streets rise up around the Pantheon...you'll see.

After way too long standing by the ruins, Alexander released us for the day already- it was like noon or something. What the heck. So we started wandering- I think just me and Britta and Jessica, cause we were gonna make our way slowly back to the hotel to do school work and take naps and such. Others went straight for the Colosseum and such. In time.

Ha HA!! I found it! The hotel I stayed at with my dad and Chris for like 5 days.

Nothing special, but it was the first place I stayed in the first city I visited my first time overseas. As you can see from my dress, it was kinda chilly, in the 40s I think- not unbearable, way warmer than Chicago/South Bend at that time :) And only somewhat colder than Barcelona.

Here, around the corner outside a little shop was a kickass wool women's coat. If it wasn't so much money, for being handmade and all, I would have bought it, if it woulda fitted Tiffany- cause it was just cool. Dunno how they even dyed it like that.

Another bit of short wandering, by memory by looking on the map, and I found a restaurant where my friend Dina had written a message for me, years ago on the lintel of the door- it was gone. But the restaurant, and the name, remained :)

Then we made our way back out to one of the main streets that leads all the way from the river, near the castle, to the Colosseum, and followed it back.

I got the largest merengue puff I'd ever seen. My Aunt Jenny makes tiny bite-sized ones that are delicioso- so I had to have this.

Admittedly, it was more than I could handle. But it was still tasty- basically took me the whole walk back to eat it. Next to me was the largest roll of "horse meat" as my dad calls it, Mortadella. Basically bologna, but grosser- giant pieces of white in it, I assume fat, and often times olives and such too. I'll pass. But cool to see :)

We walked back through Piazza Navona (how could you not!) and it was alive with activity- its the place a lot of the fair-kinda-stuff seems to happen in Rome. This time of year, near Christmas, they had lots of candy and Christmasy things like ornaments and other tree decorations, and figurines and stuff.

Here's Britta probably getting the entire piazza in one shot with her wide-angle lens. I shook my fist at her a lot for her great photos. Behind her is a truckload of candy in bins.

If you don't know by now, I like getting pictures of things with people in the pictures, taking pictures of the things. I think it sorta demystifies the photographer behind the photo. Or surrealizes it, since obviously Britta didn't take the photo that I showed.

Here's the rest of the piazza, complete with a carousel!

We took a circuitous route past the castle, exploring a bit- it has a giant dried-up moat around it (castles and moats and medieval stuff rule- though yes, this castle was a bit pre-medieval).

And just as we were finally getting back, the show began. The show being apparently hundreds of thousands of I-forget-what-kind-of-bird that seasonally flocks in Rome, and lives in these treetops, in parks and especially near the river.

So yeah, those dark clouds in the skies, those are birds. And they made a tremendous noise. I'll be posting videos later sometime. They flew in formation around and around for quite awhile before very suddenly all deciding to land. Their shapes in the sky looked like a lava lamp or something!

Here is the key to the outer door of the building where our hotel was. I thought it was cool.

The remainder of the evening was basically spent doing schoolwork. In Rome. Yep. I guess not much worse than spending a semester in Barcelona doing schoolwork :) It was due the follow week-ish, and I knew Tiffany was coming and I hadta be done by then...

The next day we embarked on some serious stuff. Right near the Vittorio Emmanuele II monument (giant white building with lots of steps and guys on horses on top, some people call it the birthday cake) were the steps up to a piazza I hadn't seen before- Campidoglio.

The buildings and the piazza pattern (a Fibonacci shape) were designed by Michaelangelo.

And if you walk through it to the back, you get a nice overlook of- Il Foro! The Forum is a great place. If you have a good imagination to see what it would have been like :)

After some standing around and listening to architectural/historical information, we walked around the corner to some building's rooftop where there was a coffee bar, and I had my very rare but delicious coffee for once. In Spain and Italy at least, and I think Switzerland and France, you can get cafe con latte/leche that is basically espresso with steamed milk, so the consistency and color and amount is that of a normal coffee with a couple creamers, but the flavor is much richer, and its frothy. DELICIOUS.

Anyway, you could see lots more ruins from up there. And a lot of domes too. Rome has a lot of domes.

Here's a theater of some sort (ruins) that a friend asked if it was the Colosseum :) Nope. That's a bit bigger.

Another cool view- only because of the AMAZING number of scooters parked down there!

Before heading back around, we went in a *little* church tucked around the corner. I don't even remember the name, but you know, you trip over churches in Rome. And they're all this nice.

We headed back around to the Vittorio monument itself, and this a view down its steps- that yellow circle will later have the city Christmas tree there. The building on the left is where Musolini and many others have had their office, and there's a balcony where he gave speeches from.

This is the tomb of the unknown soldier. Guarded 24 hours a day by guys who stand there all day and don't move or flinch. You know, like the Beefeaters in London.

And that was it for the day. Another half day of sightseeing and then off on our own. Time to wander.

Oh YEAH. If I owned a Vespa, I'd buy all kinds of stuff from this shop.

Here's a McDonalds, and I think the line out the door illustrates how sadly popular the place is in ROME. ROME!!! And people are eating this.

I was walking around with my friend Shawna, who wanted to take me to her favorite place. This little collection of buildings in front of another *small* church. She had been there when she was there while studying abroad through ASU.

These buildings were great. This is looking up at the sky, clearly, and the negative space they form, framing the sky, just awesome.

Here's a view of what the buildings really look like. Lots of extra work. Small, narrow buildings too! Must be weird inside...I could only see in the lobby, since the building was apparently the office of the Carabinieri- the police (though different from the polizia- kind of like city police vs. state troopers).

Inside Shawna's favorite church- this model that had representative types of churches from countries all over the world, all around it. Crazy idea. Crazy amount of work. Cool model.

Each country was labeled, and they were grouped by continent. I think there was one for every country, at least whichever places were countries at the time it was built. It looked old. Ish.

Again, on the way back, we wandered around the castle. There were brick pavers with mossy grass growing between them. I thought the texture and color was great.

The castle!!! Look at it. With an angel on top holding a spear. Tell me that's not awesome.

Another little Fiat!

And yet, this car was quite a bit smaller yet. Definitely wish I had a couple guys with me so we could pick it up like the car we picked up in Holland. This thing was Smart Car sized. I mean look, they didn't even hafta parallel park it!

I have no current recollection of what church this was. We found one, and walked in, cause how can you not, and it was cool, ceiling reminded me of Basilica at Notre Dame.

Here's the Pantheon. We decided to visit it on the way home. This is either 3 or 5 photos, assembled. I forget how many I hadta take.

Right behind where I took that picture, is a McDonalds. Yeah.

And here's the first of many Smart Car photos- like the Bible says, "where two or more are gathered"...I would take a picture. Here's four. I think my record in one photo was five or six.

That picture was the beginning of our adventure. Shawna and I took the afternoon to walk north, out of the old city, into more normative Rome, in search of some other things on the map. Firstly, the Olympic park, secondly some stadium things.

We first found this very Modernist building. No idea what it was or who built it.

Here's the Olympic village from 1956. Obelisk. Odd almost-coral colored buildings. Stadium in the background on the left. We couldn't really get in. Not sure what its all used for now.

A tiny little church, with lots of mosaic on the OUTSIDE. Yeah all that is not painted, its mosaic.

We found our stadiums, but first we found this odd, giant sculpture. Looks metal but turned out to be giant wood timbers, bolted together. And painted red.

Here's a basketball arena- Pier Luigi Nervi, one of the best engineer-architects of all time. Loved mathematical shapes and experimenting with the lightness of concrete. This shell is apparently only a couple inches thick.

The inside- why its so strong and yet light (and also kickass looking). It was part of the Olympics as well.

On to a brand new building, from another Italian Renzo Piano, who built the Modern Wing on the Art Institute in Chicago.

It is actually a series of three of these things, that look like armadillos, and are separate theaters, around a sunken courtyard surround by built-in seats that functioned as an amphitheater. Cool place, odd looking buildings, but whatever. Interesting.

And that was the end of that journey. We headed back (it was a couple hours, the whole walk we took) and I spent the night doing school work again.