Last Day

07/03/2012

This morning we went to the Galleria Borghese which was just as wonderful as I remembered it. I had a great time looking at all of the works in the collection and knowing that I learned something in the last four years of college! It is truly a wonderful feeling, for me, to be able to look at a work of art in a gallery like this one and be able to identify it to a degree, and also to be able to talk about it.

My brother and his girlfriend were 100% disinterested in any knowledge I had to offer, and so they went off on their own and that's fine. My mother, as always, was enraptured with every word I had to say. It's nice to have her so invested in what I've learned, but she is my mom, so in a sense it is kind of her job, right? My dad was halfway interested. There are some pieces that I could say a lot about and he would get bored halfway through things I would be saying, not the most captivated audience member, but at least he tried. My dad and I have very different ways of looking at art, and I feel like I learn a lot when I'm looking at art that he is showing me, but I never feel the same way when I am showing him art.

After visiting the Galleria Borghese we walked through the park and then went to the Galleria Nazionale D'Arte Moderna. We did not actually go inside the museum because we were pretty worn out from the Borghese. Instead we just ate salads at the cafe. Yes. Remember that salad I told you about a year ago. Radicchio, Pear and Pecorino? I had that again and it was delicious.

It wouldn't have been a trip to Rome without doing the tiniest bit of shopping, so we did some shopping  and then regrouped at the hotel.

For dinner we ate at AL34 which is a delicious restaurant run by the cutest family. They have definitely become a tourist stop, as they have been written up in all of the books, but the food is still fantastic. We had a raw zucchini salad which was divine, and I had some meatballs that were fantastic. Oh the food there is so good. GO THERE IF YOU ARE IN ROME!

The last thing I did in Rome was take a short walk with my brother and his girlfriend up the Spanish Steps and a little to the north, and then back to the south to our hotel. We didn't speak much to one another which is fine, but it cemented my decision about our sibling relationship, and I was glad to be sure of that.

The last thing I wrote in my journal was: "I can't wait to be home."

I know I had a great time on this trip. I learned a lot about myself and my family and all of the places I visited, but I'm at a transitioning point in my life and it has been very difficult to feel as though I cannot be in one place, and if I am, I cannot be happy there.

Thanks for traveling with me.
xoxo

Return to Rome

07/02/2012

I think it was nice to be back in Rome. We checked into our beautiful hotel at the top of the Spanish Steps (with a rooftop bar that has an incredible view of the city... the perks of being a travel agent's daughter) and then proceeded to explore the city. We ate lunch at Il Brillo Parlante which is the restaurant where mom and I had our first dinner in Rome last year. We ordered salad, pizza and pasta and shared it three ways. A delicious meal in my opinion, although dad was unimpressed (and I thought I was hard to please).

Our major visit of the day was to the Galleria Doria Pamphilj which was absolutely incredible. I'm not quite sure what to make of it at this point... still... one month later as I'm writing this. The gallery is inside a beautiful 16th Century palazzo which is just smack dab in the center of Rome. It is extremely easy to miss, in fact we did miss the entrance at least once. The walls in each room are filled from floor to ceiling with works of art. Everything from Titian to Memling to Vasari! The collection is stunning and so difficult to take in, especially because there are probably only ten wall labels in the entire collection, and there are well over 100 works on view (maybe closer to 200?). We were mostly excited to learn about some new (old) artists that we had never heard of before. I'll have to go through my list and organize it, but if this blog becomes what it used to be (posting artworks) I will definitely post some works by these artists.

Before dinner we went to the rooftop bar of our hotel to have drinks. I wasn't too pleased with the drink selection (they don't really like gin in Rome, and I cannot have a Spritz (aperol, prosecco, soda water) like every other person in Rome) so I ordered a White Russian because I know what it tastes like and I saw no problem with it. Apparently it's an after dinner drink, and while the waiter and bartender did not seem to care or to judge me for ordering this, my brother gave me loads of shit for ordering it. Although it's nice to try new things, I know that some types of alcohol get me seriously drunk, and that's never what I'm looking for. I'm not a lightweight, but I'm not going to order cocktails with champagne or tequila because they don't do me right, and most of the cocktails had champagne or tequila.

For dinner we went to an Osteria where everyone else ordered things they were unhappy with, and I ordered Tortellini in Brodo which was fucking divine. I'm really sad that my family was unhappy with some of the food choices they made on this trip, especially in Rome, but I saw the kind of place we were eating and I knew that even though it was 1,000,000º outside Tortellini in Brodo would be prepared just right, and it was.

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.

Buongiorno Roma!

6/20/2012

The most satisfying thing after taking two flights with extremely long layovers is arriving to your final destination and finding that all of your suitcases have made it there with you. Remember I told you (briefly) about the flight where I threw up on myself? Yeah, my bag didn't make it with me that time. But again, we're not talking about that trip. 


Rome was hot and sunny and so hot. We arrived in the afternoon. Too late for lunch, too early for dinner. So instead we all took naps and showers and eventually it was time to go to dinner. Because my mother and I were just in Rome last year it was our job to select all of the restaurants for dinners in Rome. Our first choice was L'Archetto. I believe I wrote about it last year. They have over 100 types of spaghetti sauces, and it's really quite delicious. I'm sure it's not the most authentic thing you can eat in Rome, but the food is great and who doesn't want a plate of spaghetti with any imaginable sauce ever. Last year I had basic bolognese, but this year I had cacio e pepe (a new favorite in my pasta spectrum).

Everyone seemed to like it there, but of course we were all exhausted and sweaty so it was hard to be completely pleased. L'Archetto is extremely close to the Trevi Fountain where I was so happy to meet my roommate Dana, who had already been traveling through Europe with some of her friends and happened to be in Rome at the same time as I was. We were very excited to see one another as it had been well over a month (she left graduation day, 5/12). We threw in our coins with the hopes of returning back to Rome (and I wished for something else, but you know, I'll never tell).

We had gelato all together at San Crispino which is by far the most interesting and delicious gelato I've had in Rome so I recommend it (it's even marked on my map, officially).

It's always nice to walk around a strange city at night, but surprisingly even after a whole year, Rome didn't seem that strange to me. Not that I've explored much beyond Via del Corso and the Spanish Steps after dark, but it was nice to not feel completely lost (well, most of the time).

Roma, Day #3

Monday

Today we started our day at the Colosseum! We decided to do a tour of the ancient things because neither of us are well versed in this type of architecture and history, so we thought it would be the best thing. Our tour guide was a woman from Italy and she was very knowledgable and funny. The nice thing about going on a guided tour is that you skip all of the lines and you see everything you want to see without getting lost or confused. The guidance works like this: everyone has a audio player and a headset in one ear, and then the group is on one channel so we all hear the same thing. All tour groups in Rome (and probably elsewhere) are the same. I think this is better than one person yelling at 30 people, things can get complicated.

So our tour consisted of the Colosseum, which looked like this in the morning:

Then we went to the Palatine Hill (where you can see the forum, and there are also some ruins up there, which looked like this:

And then we walked through the Forum, but by then we were so exhausted that the taking in of information was hard (also I've been having problems with my right leg), so those pictures looked like this:

As you can see, a lot of pictures, but not a lot of explanation. Rome was extremely hot and difficult because of that. But we had a great time.

After our tour we went to the old Jewish Ghetto, which is still full of Jewish shops and Kosher restaurants. We were instructed to go there by a few people, most importantly my Aunt Tania who said we would have whole fried artichokes there that would be incredible. She, as always, was right. As was everyone else who recommended it so thank you!

Whole fried artichoke? Yes! YOU CAN EAT THE WHOLE THING!

We also had falafel and humus and some fried mozzarella things that weren't what we ordered but we ate them and enjoyed them.

After lunch we walked back to our hotel for a breather (I had been working on my paper still).

Then we went to dinner at the restaurant with 114 pasta sauce choices. Yes they were all different (some only slightly different, but it still counts in my book). I had bolognese and mom had shrimp with tomatoes and spinach or rocket, she enjoyed it. We also had a salad that would not stay on our forks, or get to our mouths, so we had a laugh about the slippery salad and I think the people next to us thought we were crazy.

Then we went to the Trevi fountain (because we were told to go at night) and it was really beautiful at night. I believe I had tears in my eyes. We threw pennies over our shoulders as we both want to return to Rome, and that was our night.

Note: Ginger and Cinnamon Gelato = amazing.

Roma, Day #2

Today we had an early start, with breakfast! It was very interesting and delicious. We ate at our hotel for breakfast, they had quite the spread. The best item I ate was a verdure frittata. Then we were out the door just after 8 am. We walked to the Galleria Borghese by way of the Villa Borghese (park), and it was a really lovely walk, but it was not yet 9 am and we were already a bit on the warm side. The Galleria was very lovely. Two floors of works, they are especially proud of the Caravaggio's they have. I gave my mom some background to about 5 pieces in the gallery. Okay so you want to know which ones:

Correggio, Danäe, 1531

Raphael, Deposition, 1507

Rubens, Deposition, 1602

Caravaggio, Madonna of the Palafrenieri, 1605

Caravaggio, David with the Head of Goliath, 1609-1610

We, of course, looked at the whole gallery, and enjoyed our time there. Mom really isn't into the 16th-18th century, but I find it pretty fascinating. Of course then we walked to the Galleria Nazionale D'Arte Moderna which was full of 19th century works (which I am not particularly fond of) but my Mom seemed to enjoy. Their permanent collection was sort of closed off for renovation, so we really only saw the modern Italian artists, very interesting, their one Klimt piece (The Three Ages), and a lovely Modigliani. They also had two Cy Twombly pieces up, but I can only suspect that is because of his recent passing.

We then had a very long lunch at the museum café, Café dell'arte, or something along those lines. The food was delicious, and the smokers all arrived when we left.

Then we walked back to our hotel for a breather, but on the way we crossed a public fountain that everyone else was bathing in, so we joined them. Well just really waded in. Here is a photo:

After showering and resting we went out to the Spanish Steps, a few blocks from our hotel. We took some photos and then decided to have dinner before going up. We had a lovely dinner at a family-owned restaurant that was recommended in the guidebook, but wasn't really "inexpensive" as it was listed there. The food was great, we were both full.

After dinner we walked up the Spanish Steps and we made it to the top easily, well it was easy to climb but it was hard to combat all of the men trying to sell us roses and fake handbags. We took some photos up there and then walked down.

Kind of a relaxed first day, which ended with Gelato (Banana for me, Melon for mom).

Goodnight!!!!

London, Day #30 // Roma, Day #1

Today was my last day in London. I will miss it greatly. I feel that I have really acclimated to the London environment/way, and I am very proud of myself for that. I think my mom was a bit surprised when I could just walk to the correct tube line without looking at a map. Well I don't know it like the back of my hand, and there is still a ton to explore in London, but the month did me some good in thinking about future ventures to the land of the Brits.

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE IN LONDON WHO MADE MY EXPERIENCES WONDERFUL!

After we packed up our things we were off to Heathrow to catch our flight to Rome. Mom had to have her Starbucks, and that took forever, and then we went to Itsu (A Japanese fast-food chain in London with great food) and we had a delicious lunch. Well, sort of. The food was great, except the salad that came under my salmon and rice was COVERED in cilantro (coriander) (Mary if you are reading this, you would have died). I really can't stand eating the stuff in that large of a quantity, so I sort of had half a lunch. Then I felt really sick on the (delayed) flight, which kind of sucked. On the upside I drew my first webcomic since I've been in Europe on the plane, so you should check that out this week on WEDNESDAY.

When we arrived in Rome, we went through "customs" where some very unhappy man stamped my passport and waved me through. That was it. No line. No questions. No nothing. I think it is too easy to get into Italy. We were greeted by a car to take us to the hotel, and he spoke a good amount of English, and so he decided to give us a little tour of Rome, which was very kind of him.

Our hotel is very nice. It is small, as is our room, two twin beds with a two-inch space in between them. We have a bidet which makes me happy because I think they are the coolest things. Honestly! They are really practical, and if I had one in my house I'd probably use it... as often as one is supposed to use a bidet. Our hotel is a bit to the west, close to the Vatican (but on the other side of the river), but still within walking distance of most of the city. On Monday we will start our day at the Colosseo (Colosseum) and we will take a cab.

Dinner the first night was fine. The food was delicious, a bit rich, but good. We made the mistake of sitting outside, and were just bombarded by all the cigarette smoke around (which sucks for me on multiple levels, one is my stomach, one is my head, one is my lungs, I could go on). So we sort of tried to eat quick-er, but that doesn't really work in Italy.

Then we went up to our hotel (next door to the restaurant) and went to bed!