and, i mean, some things that i've done recently, too

Weekends this November: five.
Weekends this November I will have spent in Rome: three.

This is the truth, because I went two weeks ago with the Michelangelo class, last weekend with the All-School trip (my 'free' trip to Rome) and I am going in two weeks as part of my Etruscans & Romans class. Now that we're clear.

Anyways, this weekend I was supposed to go to Rome with Ariel, but a continuing sinus infection and new stomach virus rendered her mostly incapacitated and I basically ended up taking advantage of Syracuse University in Florence's free transportation and lodging while seeing Rome on my own. This was extremely nice because 1) no matter how much I enjoyed Renaissance Rome and the private viewing of the Sistine Chapel last weekend, the trip was mighty hectic and I felt like I could barely catch my breath the entire time and 2) the two previous times I was in Rome in September were Russian visa-related/bureaucratic nightmares that stressed me out way too much to enjoy any part of Rome at all. Okay, bitchfest over, onto the wonders of Rome:

On Friday, I left the group almost as soon as we arrived at the train station. I walked from the train station to Santa Maria degli Angeli, a Renaissance-era (the interior was designed by Michelangelo, apparently) basilica hidden under an ancient Roman bath-house. It had the most impressive proto-Baroque organ I have ever seen and very nice porphyry columnar work. I also ran into the Manifestazione, the Italian students' protest over educational reforms implemented by the government. There were banners, shouters, and an overwhelming odour of marijuana. It was like I was back in Ann Arbor again. I walked towards the Quirinal Hill (my favorite of the seven) and stopped by the Palazzo Barberini, where there was a very nice museum of High Renaissance and Baroque art, in an altogether pleasing palatial environment. To enter the museum, you walk up this very nice winding spiral staircase (not at all like the one in St. Peter's) and then since the museum is in an old palace, everything is airy and spacious and the natural environment that the paintings are in are just so nice. And yes, the artwork there is very high-quality, too! They have Raphael's La Fornarina (The Baker), reputedly a portrait of his mistress; two excellent Caravaggios (Judith and Holofernes and Narcissus) and one of Hans Holbein's protraits of Henry VIII.

After Palazzo Barberini, I went to a restaurant called Birreria Peroni for lunch, on the recommendation of my Italian professor. There, I ordered, per her recommendation as well, a dish called scamorza arrosto, which ended up being an entire roasting dish of melted cheese. Mm-hm. Delicious, yes. Incredibly unhealthy, certainly. After lunch, I walked to the ancient Roman Forum, ran into the protesters again and ducked into the Capitoline Museums for a good dose of ancient Roman art and artifacts. There, I saw the enormous head, left hand, right hand, left hand, and right (I think) kneecap of Constantine. Wonderful, really it was. Also there in the museums is the Capitoline She-Wolf, that famous sculpture of the wolf suckling Romulus and Remus. Fun fact, the babies underneath the wolf were only added later for the necessary propaganda. Oh, Rome, my love. Unfortunately, by that time, I was dead tired and still had to walk all the back towards the train station for our hotel, so I missed out on seeing the Dying Gaul. Curses.

At the hotel, my lack of friends meant that I got a room to myself for the night. Go me, obviously. I also fell asleep at seven pm and didn't wake up until seven am. You know those kind of nights. Necessary, and I'll just see the Trastevere the next time I'm in Rome. Saturday morning, I spilt from the group once again and went exploring in the suburbs, to the ponte Milvio, which is this bridge where lovers go and fasten locks onto the bridge pilings before throwing the keys behind them into the Tiber. Romantic, yet polluting. The hopeless romantic in me had to see it before I left Italy; and the ironic pragmatist in me chuckled when I saw the enterprising vendors selling locks and keys at various intervals for those less-prepared lovers amongst us. I caught a tram back towards the center of the city (the bridge is kind of south of nowhere-type) and just wandered down the via del Corso, one of the main arteries of Rome. Ostensibly, I was looking for the Museo del Corso, which had an exhibit of Dutch Masters. Unfortunately, I never did find it, and by the time I stumbled upon a Basquiat thing going on at the Palazzo Ruspoli (whatever that is, I googled it) which utterly made up for missing a Vermeer or three. I don't think the exhibition had a lot of his famous famous paintings but it did have one called Suiting, Tuxedoes that I really liked. They made me check my camera at the door though, so I couldn't even take any stealth photos. And I went to Muji in Rome. Obviously.

I finally re-joined the Syracuse group Saturday afternoon on the excursion to the Galleria Borghese, Cardinal Scipione Borghese's own "pleasure palace," the "Playboy Mansion of its day" (tm Sebastian, best guide ever) which is now filled with masterpieces of the Baroque, mostly Bernini and Caravaggio. Most importantly, it has Bernini's Apollo and Daphne and Rape of Proserpina. Seeing them was absolutely breathtaking, one of the first truly "wow, pause" moments so far in Italy. I think the only other one so far was when we went to the Laurentian Library, but that's not the point. The point was that you could see where Bernini sculpted Proserpina's tears and Pluto's fingers' indentations in her thigh. The point was after you took a turn around Apollo and Daphne, you could see the procession of her transfiguration, from the bark forming around her torso to the tips of her fingers turning into laurel leaves. The point was totally getting a talking-to from a humourless guard about "no pictures! no no no pictures!!!!" in the galleries.

After returning on Saturday night, I met Katie for a late dinner, where again I consumed a singularly unhealthy amount of dairy product, this time in the form of a gorgonzola-and-mozarella calzone that was supposed to have tomatoes in it as well but so emphatically did not. And then, gelato from Grom, this time caco (persimmon) and torrochino (torrone/nougat). It's not that I haven't gained weight, it's that since there are no dryers in this country, none of my jeans actually fit anymore. Deceptive, you see.

THEN, of course, Katie and I go out for American brunch this early/late afternoon. We went, this time per my roommate's recommendation, to a little restaurant tucked away between piazza Signoria and Santa Croce called La Via dell'Acqua, where we waited for an absurdly long time for absurdly good food. Katie got scrambled egg whites and turkey bacon while I ordered blueberry pancakes and a side of fried ham (really prosciutto cotto, but who's complaining). It was almost life-changingly (though still not as good as Egg) good, the blueberry pancakes, because they aren't even my favorite breakfast food! Like, that's how good the pancakes are, or, conversely, how much I miss the concept of Sunday brunch. Either way, delicious is the bottom line. And there was American coffee. Don't get me wrong, I will take a macchiato, always, but there is just something so comforting about a biggish ceramic mug, filled with coffee, and it even comes with a spoon of mini chocolate chips.