Fall Break - The Beginning

...which wasn’t actually much of a break at all, if you’re thinking of a break as a relaxing time. But then, why would I want it to be, when I had my parents here and I got to play tour guide in my adopted city? In an attempt to cram a week’s worth of touring around Rome and nearby cities into a theoretically reasonable amount of space, I’m going to try to keep the photos to a minimum (ahaha). Many of the places I took Mom and Dad to are things you’ve already seen here, or will see when we visit them as a class, so I’ll save my photos of those places for their proper times. Speaking of photos, I am obliged to give credit to Dad for taking a lot of these photos and then sharing them with me to post here--you can thank him for the existence of the ever-elusive candid shots of me.

I was originally going to make this week all one post, but when it got to be about 20 pages in Word, with more than 100 pictures, I thought your computers might appreciate it if I split up the days.

Saturday

Picking up from where I left off in my last (chronological) post, I eventually managed to find the hotel and met up with Mom and Dad where they were sitting out in the hotel's garden to see me come in, which ruined my idea of surprising them at their room, boo. After about a half hour of talking and me clinging to whichever of them was unlucky enough to be within arm's reach, they managed to pry me off of them to go back to the Centro so that they could see where I had been living.

Me and Mom in my room--I think about half of the week was spent with me just hugging whichever of them was closest. I gave them the tour of the disturbingly quiet Centro (there were only eight students that hadn't left on some sort of trip, at least at the beginning of the week) and browsed through the things from home they had kindly brought to me (like more winter clothes, and American food). It was around noon, so I took them to my favorite pizza place for lunch, began what would become a week-long ordeal of fighting with Dad over not acting like a typical American tourist (love you Dad!), and exercised my Italian in order to scrounge up bus tickets to take them into the city proper.

We took the 44 bus to Piazza Venezia (they got really familiar with this bus, as it's one of the few that I know the route of) and after a brief stop at Trajan's column as you can see here, wandered up the main street, dropping by the convenient tourist places located along it. Our first real stop was at the Pantheon, which I think is a pretty good introduction to famous Roman sites, no?

Dad took a lot of pictures of Mom and me wandering around, for some reason. Here, I'm probably playing tour guide (and quite possibly making stuff up, since I haven't visited this site in the class yet). The Pantheon is free to get into, which is very nice. It was also crowded, which is not at all a surprise. A small choir group sang briefly--I don't know what prompted it, as there certainly weren't services being held--but it was wonderful to hear their voices echoing around the building.

Dad took entirely too many pictures of Mom and me...here's the one where we finally turned around and I gave him the stink-eye. There are, probably unsurprisingly, a lot of pictures of me making this face :)

I figured we needed a few pictures of Dad, but sometimes the only way to get a candid shot of him is while he's taking a picture of his own. So...have a picture of him taking a picture.

As promised, here I am hugging a column at the Pantheon. Well, to be overly technical, it's a pilaster, a square column...but it still counts, and the proper Pantheon columns are somewhat boring if you're not looking at the capitals, as they're smooth gray granite.

After we'd explored the Pantheon for a while (no worries, you'll see lots of Pantheon pictures later), we wandered over to the Trevi Fountain, which despite being my favorite non-Roman monument in Rome I hadn't yet visited this time. It is named such because of its position at the intersection of three roads (tre vie), and was built to mark the end of a Roman aqueduct in 1762. There's a lot of sculpture on the fountain, but the primary focus is of the water god Oceanus, with a Triton (minor sea god) on either side, one raising the sea (represented here by a horse) into stormy waves, and the other one calming the sea.

The Trevi Fountain is always packed. It's a great place to people watch...if you watch your wallet. Also, don't ever buy gelato (or anything, really) near the fountain--it's absurdly overpriced.

Mom and Dad, together in Rome!

Here I am doing the traditional coin throw into the Trevi Fountain...there's lots of different versions of how this wish is supposed to go, but I went with the one I learned on my trip with Magistra. You throw three coins (from your right hand over your left shoulder!) into the fountain: one for luck, one for love, and one for a return to Rome. Since I never have three of the same coin, I make sure the highest value coin is the one I throw for the return to Rome. It certainly worked to get me back to Rome once already!

When we were done with the Trevi Fountain, we stopped at a coffee shop to rest briefly and then resumed our meandering toward the Spanish Steps. Along the way I somehow managed to find Vertecchi (the stationary store from a few months ago) again, so that Mom could explore. She had fun, and I found out that they have fairly inexpensive calligraphy pens, so I might go back at some point to pick one up. We then headed on to the Spanish Steps, at which point the sky unfortunately opened up and started raining--not too terribly badly, but the main point of the Spanish Steps is to people watch, so we didn't stay very long. We attempted to take the metro back toward the hotel, which didn't work quite as well as I was hoping...we got more than a little lost, and it took us quite a while to get back (including way too much waiting in the the rain). We eventually got back to the hotel, and decided that we weren't feeling up to searching for dinner, so we made reservations at a nearby restaurant from the hotel. As it turns out, the place we chose is a highly-acclaimed restaurant with fantastic food and service--it was expensive, naturally, but the food was spectacular and we had a wonderful evening (the restaurant is called Arco Antico, if you're curious). They then walked me back to the Centro to ensure that I would know how to get to the hotel (did I mention how absurdly lost I'd managed to get?), they took the opportunity to check their email from my internet connection, and we said goodnight.

Also, you all get a very special treat--I asked Mom if she would guest-blog her experiences to share, and she has! So here are her impressions of the day:

After getting in early Friday morning and spending a lazy day exploring by ourselves (even finding the Centro), Saturday we were looking forward to Katie getting in about 10:30 a.m. and meeting up with her. We had gotten up early and had breakfast in the hotel and took a leisurely walk in a large park near the hotel. We had sent an email telling her what room we were in, so until she got in and came over, we sat and waited. I sat in the garden because I wanted to see her as she got in, which I did, but she wanted to surprise us instead of the other way around. I was pleased. After our hellos and getting caught up, we decided to go to lunch and Katie's favorite pizza place (which turned out to be a different place than we had gone to dinner the night before). Our first sightseeing trip together, we decided to stay fairly local and headed to the Pantheon. I found that sightseeing in Rome is very different than a lot of places. The city is so old and the streets so narrow, you'll be walking along feeling like you're lost, then OMG there's the Pantheon! It was very crowded because it was Saturday, but we were able to look at everything and even got a brief treat when a small group of singers broke out in some kind of Gregorian chant singing a capella. Then we were off to the Trevi Fountain. Same thing....winding along small cobblestone streets and it appears almost out of nowhere. Sat and listened to the water for a while and watched Katie throw her coin in, and then we were off again. Vertecchi was an upscale office supply store that Katie had written about in an earlier blog and I said I wanted to go there. A very nice shop.....of course I like stores with lots of colorful paper/stationery/calendars, pens, etc. I bought a calligraphy pen and my 2011 calendar in Italian. Then it was off to the Spanish Steps. It had been threatening rain all day and just as we got to the open area, the sky opened up! So much for people watching! We decided to just head back to the hotel and figure out what we were going to do for dinner. Getting back turned out to be a bigger challenge then getting there. It took a few times on the Metro to get it right. The hotel gave us a few recommendations for restaurants and made us a reservation at one right around the corner. We headed over and were surprised to find it was a VERY NICE restaurant with white tablecloths and napkins. Feeling a bit underdressed, we went in expecting to be dismissed because of some dress code. We were pleasantly surprised to find we were welcomed warmly and had a very enjoyable an delicious dinner. Although ordering a la carte, the waiter would bring addidtional dishes with a small taste of things we had questions about to share with each other. Was a nice ending to our first day together.

I'm cheating here--Dad took these pictures, since I was still in Sicily at the time. This is the lovely park they found near me on their exploratory walk, and I just had to add something about that.