Fall Break - Lazy Day

Friday

We had all had lots of fun in Florence, and decided to basically take the next day off. We all slept in (which is to say, I did, and Mom and Dad enjoyed a quiet breakfast without me), and when we met up later I took them to my favorite kebab shop for lunch. These aren’t kebabs like you’re probably thinking of, but that’s what they’re called here. It’s a giant tortilla wrapped around (probably pork) meat with Middle Eastern spices, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, olive oil, and special dressings. I’m not a very adventurous eater, so I only get the meat and lettuce, but they are certainly delicious (and remarkably cheap, as it’s a wonderfully filling and complete meal for about 3 Euro). We hopped on a small local bus up to the top of the Gianicolo Hill to eat lunch and enjoy the view—the Gianicolo Hill has a fantastic view of the whole of “downtown” Rome, where all the major sites are. 

Fall Break - Florence

(Haha, you thought I had given up on the blog now that I’m back in the US and months behind, didn’t you? Shame on you! This is as much a diary of my journeys as it is a way to show off to all of you, and I am going to finish it—I have personal notes as well as class notes for every post left)

Thursday

Ciao Firenze! For all that it has really nothing to do with classics or anything Roman, I love Florence. The evidence of its time as a Renaissance city are everywhere, particularly in the graceful cathedrals and ducal palaces. The city also has a lot of piazzas—there are plenty of narrow alleyways, of course, but then they open onto beautiful open spaces full of people, light, and sculpture. Especially sculpture—it’s everywhere! Rome is a beautifully historic city, but it tends to hide its treasures away in museums. Florence is more like one giant museum all on its own. It’s even like a museum in that in several areas, you’re more likely to hear English than Italian!

Fall Break - Vatican City

Wednesday

Wednesday was Vatican day! We went to the Colosseum very early in the morning to be at the front of line, but that doesn’t tend to work as well with the Vatican—it can take hours to get in. The easier way to deal with the lines is to wait until lunchtime, but that doesn’t leave you with anywhere near enough time to see even just the highlights. We’d been trying to find a good day to do the Vatican while dealing with this problem—and then I read in a guidebook that there’s a papal service at Saint Peter’s Basilica on Wednesday mornings. Score! We reasoned that the service would keep most people in the Basilica rather than the Vatican museums, so we hopped on the bus to the Vatican—and found practically no line at all! Actually, the museums were more empty than I or Dad have ever seen before—we got astoundingly lucky. 

Fall Break - The Cat Sanctuary

Tuesday

Since we’d had such a busy Monday, we decided to take it easy on Tuesday. We all had a chance to sleep in, and I took advantage of having Mom as my fellow cat-lover to go back to Largo Argentina to see the cat sanctuary there. I pointed out the remains of the temples, and then started pointing out cats—there are hundreds of them!

Fall Break - Off to the Colosseum

Monday

This was the really big day...I dragged them out of bed early so that we could avoid the lines to get in to see...

Fall Break - Back to the Capitoline

Sunday

I'd like you all to appreciate how much I love my parents--after more than a week of twelve-plus hour days and about six hours of sleep a night, I was willing to wake up early in order to join them at their hotel for breakfast. Of course, when I tried to remind them of this, they pointed out that they flew to Rome to visit me, and I can't really compete with that :) Anyway, the hotel breakfast was very nice, and I discovered a new favorite--meleverde (green apple) juice. It was delicious, and now I keep trying to find it at the neighborhood grocery stores, because I'm fairly certain I won't be able to find it back home.

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.

Rome

Still playing catch-up, while also working on two research papers, a presentation, and studying for end of semester exams. It has become inescapably clear to me that I won't be caught up by the time I leave, so you're going to get a few posts out of chronological order as I muse on the depressingly few days I have left in Rome, because they won't mean nearly as much if I'm writing them when I get back to the United States.

Thanksgiving at the Centro

Yes, I know, I was trying to keep things in order--rest assured, I'll be back to playing catch up after this, but I wanted to share our Thanksgiving celebrations only a day late instead of about a month late.

Back To Rome

Ah, finally Saturday, and back in Rome at last. The ferry ride was uneventful--this boat didn't have any good decks to stand out on, so I went to bed early and slept through most of the ride. We were once again woken up at an ungodly early hour, packed onto the bus, and headed back to Rome. There were no classes today, which was good as I doubt any of us had the ability to pay attention at this point. The drive from Naples to Rome took somewhere around two and a half hours, and once back in Rome I took just enough time to drag my suitcase up the stairs and then ran off to go visit Mom and Dad, who had gotten in the previous evening. I managed to get horrendously lost, which is just embarrassing, but to be fair I hadn't visited the hotel since the beginning of the semester and I was running on almost no sleep anyway. Eventually with the help of a nice jogger (I ended up near a park and nearly went completely the wrong direction) I found the hotel, and proceeded to start my fall break in earnest.