Water-bound, Leaving Rome, The joys of living with a travel agent

6/22/2012

I will say that as the daughter of a travel agent I've been able to travel in some pretty nice scenarios over the years. My dad really loves cruise ships. There are nice things about them, and things that at this point I really detest. Although it's nice to not have to unpack your bag in 8 different cities, it's not nice to not really be able to explore a place because you're chained to a departing time that the ship dictates, etc. I will also say that most of the people who travel on cruises are pretty conservative and at times uninteresting. I enjoyed it much much more when I was a child, but now I think I'm kind of sick of it, and after this trip I can say I was a bit unimpressed (I've been on some nice cruises in my day) and not really motivated to want to cruise again.

But when it's reduced and you get free chocolate covered strawberries who can really complain?

Before boarding the ship we did some last minute things in Rome, well really only one last minute thing. We visited the Ara Pacis, which is an extremely interesting museum with a controversial architectural  history. They had a Russian Avant Garde exhibition there, and you know me... I love the Russians. There were some really interesting pieces, but I didn't really understand why they had so few pieces for every artists. I'm assuming it had something to do with space, but some of the works were not really representative of an artist's body of work, for example the Kandinsky pieces they had were nothing like his recognizable works (which was cool for me since I hadn't seen the pieces) but you'd think they would have at least one piece to put it in perspective. I felt similarly about the Chagall pieces they had... like nothing I'd seen, not really his best works. I'm just being a prude. I was excited to learn about more Russian artists, especially females such as Olga Vladimirovna Rozanova, I really love her work.

After visiting the museum we bought some sandwiches for the drive to Civitavecchia and were on our way. Today was Mom and Dad's anniversary, so for dinner we ate at one of the "specialty" restaurants on the ship. It was sort of Italian food, but not really. It was definitely fancier than the everyday restaurant, but overall it wasn't too spectacular.

After dinner Mike, Kit and myself went to one of the many bars on the ship and had drinks. They danced. It was really cute. I don't think I've seen my brother dance in my life ever so I'm glad that he's dancing with her. I had something that was called "Pear Rosemary Lemonade" which had some kind of alcohol in it, but I didn't write it down so I don't know what it was. Probably vodka.

Villa Farnesina, Fried Artichokes, Rome

6/21/2012

Because my mother and I were just in Rome last year, we decided that we did not want to do all of the same things that we had just done. So instead of joining my father, my brother and his girlfriend at the Vatican, we went off on our own little adventure.

Something that I studied in a few of my art history classes was Raphael's Galatea in the Villa Farnesina, and I've always wanted to see it for myself. My mother sat in one of my art history classes in my last semester, and that day we were discussing some of the (well, raunchy) frescoes at the Villa Farnesina. Beyond the sex of it all, there are really some lovely and fantastic works to be seen there, so we were both very excited to go.

Before arriving there we spent our time walking through Campo de Fiori for the morning market (which was so lovely and wonderful, I just die for farmer's markets) and also getting a little bit lost on the west side of the river, but you haven't traveled until you're lost, right? In my written journal I wrote that we "wandered" over to the Villa Farnesina, but I sort of remember it as being a frenzied journey through streets without sidewalks and too many cars and motorcycles, and some shady looking alleyways. A journey is a journey.

The Villa Farnesina is WORTH the price of admission and WORTH at least an hour of your busy schedule in Rome. The most exciting thing for me is that many of the Raphael works in the Villa were enhanced by his apprentice, Giulio Romano, who later became an artist in his own right and created the glorious Palazzo del Te, in Mantova, which we also visited last summer, and which I just finished writing a paper about (I could have written a book about it, it's fucking fascinating).

There are just about five or six rooms that you see (two stories) which are covered in frescoes done by many different artists. The most notable, which I have already mentioned, is Raphael's Galatea which is said to be inspired by Botticelli's Birth of Venus, which I'm sure you're all familiar with.

Next (to the left of) to the Galatea is Sebastiano del Piombo's Polyphemus which was supposedly designed by Michelangelo, who then gave his design to Piombo to show up Raphael. Men, right?

The next room is a loggia of Cupid and Psyche, meaning that all of the frescoes are related to the story of Cupid and Psyche, sound familiar? Well, there's a room with the same purpose in the Palazzo del Te, so it was exciting for me to actually know what I was looking at, since the story was the centerpiece of my paper. In this room the different scenes from the stories are surrounded by vines that are growing all kinds of fruits, flowers and vegetables. As a fun joke, however, some of this agriculture is a little dirtier than one would ever expect.

 If you look just above Mercury's left hand you can see this:

Yay art! The Villa is also filled with some tromp l'oeil images of curtains, columns and whole cities, painted into walls to look three-dimensional, so it really is worth your time. After the Villa Farnesina, we walked along the river down to the Mouth of Truth, which you probably know of if you've seen Roman Holiday. I didn't stick my hand in, but my mother did. Here's a photo of me aiding Teddy in sticking her hand in, because for the blog's sake we thought it was more important, and you can only take one photo per person/bear. Oh well.

I really do hate photos of myself. After that we headed over to the Jewish quarter for delicious fried artichokes. I have been waiting to eat these again ever since we had them last year. They are so wonderful I cannot even describe to you how wonderful they are. We ate at Sora Margherita which is a tiny little unmarked place where they hand write their menu EVERY DAY (as in several menus for the restaurant, not just one menu that is posted). We had beer, fried squash blossoms, fresh buffalo mozzarella with tomatoes, and of course the fried artichokes. The leaves taste like artichoke potato chips and the heart is just as juicy and delicious as ever.

We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around Rome, which was really lovely. We walked through several piazzas, my dad was very interested in walking into every single church we passed (which is really not my thing), so eventually I went off on my own a tiny bit.

For dinner we went to Il Gabriello which was very interesting. The restaurant is underground which was nice and cool, and all of the decor is famous images of Marilyn Monroe that have been painted on or collaged with. The food there was very good, but the service was pretty strange (we were sitting next to a party of eight or so, and they were definitely "more important" which is fine). After dinner we had gelato at Giolitti (also famous for being in Roman Holiday), and it was really delicious. I don't think I am good at ordering gelato because everyone else's always tastes better than mine, but mine was better than some of the cheaper gelato we have had before.