Roaming Rome

Haha oh yes, what a clever title I thought of. I'm so creative... or something. Anyway, enough self flattery... as the heading suggests, I spent the last week in Rome with my friend Neile (another auxiliar in San Fernando, the town adjacent to Cádiz). We really lucked out because we were invited to stay at a friend of a friend's apartment for the entire week! We had to take a bus to get to the city center (the ride ranged between 35 and 90 minutes, depending on the time of day and intensity of last minute holiday shopping), but waiting through bumper to bumper traffic and enduring constant honking, sirens, and swerving motorcycles was a small price to pay for the generous offer of free lodging and overwhelmingly kind hospitality. Besides, we met many interesting people on buses including a Moroccan who complimented me on how good my English was (he may or may not have thought I was from Spain) as well as an older gentleman who worked as a journalist and had interviewed a variety of high profile figures including James Watson, of Watson and Crick (the two scientists who received credit for discovering the double helix structure of DNA). You never know who you'll meet! Anyway, the apartment itself was quite comfortable and nice, especially in comparison to a hostal, because we had the option to cook some of our own meals and some space just to cozy up and veg out after walking around the city all day.

We spent the first half of the week checking out the normal touristy sight seeing things: the Coliseum, The Roman Forum, The Trevi Fountain, The Pantheon, The Basilica de San Pietro, The Spanish Steps, etc etc. Overall, I generally dismiss large cities as too big, too loud, and too dirty for me, but I have to say I am highly impressed with Rome. I really liked how we could walk a few city blocks, turn the corner, and see ancient ruins pop up seemingly out of no where. It was cool to get to be in a place where the remains of an ancient civilization are so easily visible in a modern urban center. I also liked getting to compare the similarities/differences between Roman ruins and and ruins I have seen from other places like in South and Central America. Two of my favorite touristy places were San Pietro and the Spanish Steps. San Pietro is amazing just because everything about it is so elaborate and huge. I know that could describe the majority of all churches in Europe, but I feel like there's something different about this one. It's elaborate and huge in a tasteful way.... hmm... but that implies that I think all other European churches are untastefully decorated, which isn't true... maybe it's something to do with the colors and the lighting in the interior? We went during the late afternoon, so there were sunbeams shining through the upper windows which added to the overall effect. The statues lining the outside of it are pretty impressive too, make sure you look at the pictures! Anyway, I also liked the Spanish Steps, which we visited after San Pietro. Even though it was swarming with people, something I usually don't like, we got there late in the afternoon and got to watch the sunset from the very top of the steps. We stayed there and watched for a while, as it was quite pretty and there was a lot of people to watch and apartment buildings with cool terraces for us to pretend we were going to purchase someday.

Also, on one of the days, we somewhat spur of the moment took a train to Florence. Great decision. I love Florence. It's a lot smaller than Rome and still has a lot of great places to see... just a really pretty city. Although we didn't have enough time to see and do everything, my favorite place we went was the Duomo. From the outside, it's easily the most attention-drawing place in the city simply given its sheer size. I enjoyed getting to go inside and look around, but what I really liked was getting to climb up the stairs to the top and get to get a close viewing of the intense fresco of the Final Judgment on the ceiling as well as going outside (once you reach the top of the stairs) and get a 360 degree view of the entire city and outlying areas. My pictures of the fresco turned out pretty dark unfortunately so it doesn't look as cool as it really is, but hopefully it gets the idea across. The upper parts are of heaven, but the lower down parts depict some pretty intense images of life in Hell, including people getting poked and prodded with a red-hot tipped stakes in inappropriate places. Yikes!

On Christmas Day, Neile and I were a little disappointed that Santa Claus didn't seem to find us (I don't blame him, we were at some Italian person's apartment in Rome, not at home like we normally are!), but we got over our initial disappointment and got ourselves ready to go back to San Pietro because that is where the Pope was going to speak later on that day. After fueling ourselves with some delicious cappuccino, we made our way to the square where a mass of people was already gathering. We were just kind of being sheep and following the crowd when all of sudden, a woman with a microphone rapidly approached us, with her trusty cameraman closely behind. She asked us some interview question in rapidfire Italian... I think it was regarding something about "il Papa" (the Pope) and the "benedizione" (the blessing), which obviously made sense since that's the event that everyone was gathering in the piazza for... anyway, since I have no knowledge of Italian and I was taken off guard by the reporter's sneak attack, I panicked, made a weird little noise that was supposed to communicate "I know nothing" and pointed to Neile, who speaks just enough Italian to say little phrases like "We don't know Italian" (her response to the reporter's question). This however did nothing to deter the reporter and the she kept on asking poor Neile more questions in Italian as I slowly backed away and scooted out the scene. Eventually we both got away and somehow found ourselves right up near the entrance of the church where a rows of chairs were set up. The seats where only about a third occupied, so we strolled right on up and chose a front-ish and pretty close to center position.... right behind a whole bunch of little boys in matching school uniforms. It turns out that they were all part of a boarding school in Ireland, but came from all sorts of different places, but mostly Latin American countries. They had flags of their country that they waved in the air and displayed with patriotic pride (a group of Venezuelan boys were closest to us... I also saw flags from Mexico, Chile, Argentina, etc...). They were quite silly and rambunctious leading up to the benedizione and quite entertaining to watch. While they spoke English well, they still chatted amongst each other in Spanish. Interestingly, It was actually somewhat comforting to hear Spanish at this point in the trip -- hearing so much of it at once almost made things seem homey!

All of this is only leading up to the blessing, which finally took place at noon after a couple hours of waiting. Pope Benedict XVI appeared on a balcony above the piazza and talked for a bit about how solidarity and international dialogue are important to solving the global social and political issues of today, and then he said Merry Christmas in a whole bunch of different languages. In the end, it was kind of short, but actually pretty cool to go to -- when else in my life am I going to be in Rome on Christmas and get the chance to hear the Pope speak? The rest of Christmas we went back to the apartment and watched Christmas movies dubbed in Italian on the TV and made a dinner of pasta and pesto with cherry tomatoes and mozzarella, yum! It definitely wasn't a typical Christmas, and a little weird not being with the fam, but overall decently satisfying.

Well, I'm sure there's more, but that's all I can think of for right now, and probably enough for you all to read for right now too!

Oops, I thought I posted the link to the pictures, but I guess I forgot to save it or something... here it is:

New Album 11/24/08 7:44 AM