Following the path of enlightenment (Italy, Part V)

Oh c’mon, guys, how could I not make an Angels and Demons reference? Everywhere I looked in Rome I found another scene from the book, another factual tidbit from the story. It’s Dan Brown fan heaven, though I admit that I felt like a huge cliché walking around, mentally referencing everything against what I’ve learned from Robert Langdon.

So I arrived in Rome on Monday around midday.  Made my way to the hostel, a conveniently short walk from the train station, and dumped my backpack there to go exploring for the day.  While checking in the reception guy convinced me to go on a guided walking tour of the Vatican and St. Peter's Basilica.  Oh, why not.  I'm in Rome, I kind of wanted to go there anyway, and it saved me figuring it out for myself.

Leaving my bag, I headed back to Roma Termini train station to take the metro over towards Vatican City, The Vatican.  Fun fact about Rome: unlike most other major European cities, Rome's metro system is tiny, just two lines.  Why?  Because modern Rome is built on top of the ruins of several older cities of Rome, and no serious metro system can be built without destroying that.  I made it to the right station, stopped in a pizza place for a quick lunch and then headed to the meeting point for the tour.  After half an hour or so the nine of us - seven young women, one older guy and Daniella, our guide - left the country of Italy and headed into the state of The Vatican.

Big fat travel tip for The Vatican: everyone wants to go to St. Peter's Basilica.  Don't.  The queue will keep you amused for hours.  Instead, go to the Vatican Museums. After five minutes in the queue, you'll get a combined ticket for both the Museums and the Basilica that lets you walk straight from one into the other, which is what we did.  The Museums are overwhelming.  Imagine the Louvre crammed into a space one-third the size.  Every single place you look there's a statue or an artefact - beautiful, but diminished by the prolificity.

What I really enjoyed was the Basilica.  We laughed at the silly tourists lining up all the way across St. Peter's Square for tickets as we walked out of the museum and into the Basilica.  It was amazing.  I was surprised.  I'm not the biggest fan of the top dogs of the Catholic Church, so I figured a lot of the hype about The Vatican, St. Peter's Basilica and so on was just hyperbolic and the ramblings of ignorant tourists.  Well, maybe I'm a little too skeptical now.

 The Basilica is amazing.  It's huge beyond belief - it's the biggest church in the world, and after my travels, especially through Italy, I thought I'd seen some damn big churches and religious buildings.  Even after all that, St. Peter's Basilica took my breath away.  The size of it really is incomprehensible - and there's even a series of marks on the floor of the centre aisle from the main doors marking the length of the nave of other major churches around the world - but the decoration is also astounding.  The amount of effort and material that goes into decorating a building of that size is beyond belief, and it looks lovely.  

I got particularly excited by two things - the first was seeing the tomb of King Kristina, one of my heroes.  Yes, King Kristina.  Born on December 8th, 1626, exactly 366 years before me, she was raised as the crown prince and heir of Sweden following the death of her father, and was formally crowned as its sovereign king at the age of 24.  Though female, Kristina insisted on being addressed and crowned as the king because in Sweden the queen was the powerless puppet wife of the king, and it was her husband who held all the power.  Essentially, she was one sassy woman with a funky name and the same birthday as me.  Though I knew she abdicated the throne after a few years to convert to Catholicism (Sweden was a strongly Protestant country) I didn't know that she was buried in the Vatican.  That was pretty cool.

The other thing was part of the architecture.  Along the top of the wall of the Basilica runs a mosaic strip two metres high bearing an inscription in Latin, I can't remember what.  There's another inscription running around the base of  the huge, vaulted dome above the central nave of the Basilica, too, which says something like 'You are Peter, you are the rock and to you I will give the keys to the kingdom of Heaven'.  In Latin.  See, my name comes from Latin.  Actually, it comes from the Latin word for heaven.  So the part where it says 'keys to the kingdom of Heaven' (which is actually rendered 'of the heavens', by the way), reads 'CLAVES REGNI CAELORUM'.  Quick Latin lesson - 'caelum' is the singular nominative form of the word for heaven, that is, the singular subject.  'Caeli' is the singular genitive, i.e. possessive ('of heaven') and 'caelorum' is the plural genitive ('of the heavens'), but they're all just conjugations, forms, of the same word.  So my name is written in two-metre-high letters on the walls of St.  Peter's Basilica.  Me, the girl who could never have the personalised mug or t-shirt or ruler with her name on it like you see in shops because my name is never one of the options.  Me.  On the walls of St. Peter's Basilica.  Nice.
 
We walked outside and watched the Swiss Guards for a while (think the Italian version of the Secret Service out of the 1600s and you have some idea) and then finished the tour in St. Peter's Square just before sunset.  I then amused myself greatly by standing on the edge of St. Peter's Square and jumping from one foot to the other and thereby jumping the border between Italy and the Vatican.  In Italy, now I'm in The Vatican!  Back in Italy, now in the Vatican again!  It was the first time I've visited another country and known where the border was, so I took advantage.

I sat down for a hot chocolate and then walked down to Castel Sant'Angelo, again, a Dan Brown reference.  It was dark by this point, so I wandered for 20 minutes in the mosquito-ed cold and then decided that I'd 'seen' the castle and I should go and have dinner and go home.  I found a little cafe in a random street, ate a margherita pizza followed by an espresso coffee (true Italian and French espresso - yuck!  I don't know how they can drink the stuff!) and then began the walk back to the metro to take a train home to the hostel.

Day 2 and Day Last in Rome - basically a bombarding of my poor senses.  I accomplished exactly two/three things with the whole day - il Colosseo e il Foro Romano e il Palatino.  Translated, that's the Colosseum which is just down the road from the complex that houses the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill.  The Forum is a big, ongoing Roman dig complex that's massive and easy to get lost in and hard to see all of at once.  Palatine Hill is a giant hill with some still-intact tall structures that you can walk up - the stairs are still there.  Both are thoroughly worth seeing, and rather than waste time and words I'll simply post some photos below.  (Also, another travel tip: to avoid the queues at the Colosseum, buy the combined ticket at the entrance to the Forum or Palatine Hill and you can literally walk straight through the barriers at the Colosseum afterwards).  My foot got the hugest workout between the two complexes and my brain became overwhelmed by about 4pm and I decided to bail, go back to the hostel and get stuck into the homework that was due the afternoon that I returned to France.  I did my best to focus on homework, taking a break only to go upstairs and eat the free pasta dinner that was provided.  Then I repacked my bag, set my alarm for 4am and crashed out around 10pm.

I was actually up at 4, was clothed, cleaned and checked out by 4.30am.  I made it to the station, hopped on the next shuttle to Ciampino airport and made it into the boarding queue for my flight just in time.  No weight problems this time, despite my concerns, either because I was wearing all my clothes under my coat or because all my heavy textbooks were in the handbag discretely slung over my arm.  A short, two-hour flight and I was back in Paris (well, Beauvais).  Shuttle to city, walk to metro, take metro to Le Bourget, bingo baby, I've been to Italy!

Mind you, I had class that same afternoon, and my first assignment was due in...

Random architecture in Vatican City

Room of Animals

A ceiling.  With painting

The seal of...goodness-only-remembers which Pope

St. Peter's Square from outside the Basilica

Fuzzy photos inside the Basilica

King Kristina's tomb

My name.  In the Vatican.

The Swiss guards (and they were pretty cute, too)

Sunset over St. Peter's Basilica

Il Colosseo

Some local wildlife...

Il Foro Romano

A Roman stadium

Views of Rome from Palatine Hill

That's St. Peter's over to the left

Failed attempts at being arty

Inside the Colosseum

Bored, footsore experimental Colosseum photograph

The Colosseum from the upper levels

Clouds and Colosseums

Bane, Ronan...Firenze (Italy, Part IV)

Yes, a Harry Potter reference!  Come on, has no-one else made the connection between J.K. Rowling's centaur and the Italian name of Florence?

My last two days in Florence were filled with...well, more of the same, really.  On Saturday morning I finally made it to San Spirito - lovely, by the way - and was just sitting down to the best cappuccino I've had in forever (travel tip - if you pay more than 1.50 for a cappuccino in Italy, you're getting thoroughly ripped off) when my phone rang.  Mariana was in town and she and Andrea wanted to swing by and pick me up.  Mariana said Andrea had somewhere he wanted to take us, and she murmured something about 'place' and 'Michaelangelo'.  I got excited.  I'd heard good things about Piazza Michaelangiolo, but it's hard to get to without a car.

So I guzzled my wonderful cheap coffee and hobbled up to the station to meet them.  The Piazza was wonderful.  It's on a hill about Florence, so you get the most amazing views of the town - and, of course, another recreation of Michaelangelo's David, which is located in the Galleria dell'Academia in Firenze and which I chose not to see cause it costs a bit to get in.  Another travel note for Italy - unlike France, everything costs, and it adds up very quickly.  Anyway, amazing amazing views from the Piazza Michaelangiolo and from the two churches on the hill just above it.  We headed so Andrea could have 'the most amazing kebab in Florence' and Mariana and I could have what had to be the worst chips.  We then grabbed a coffee in Piazza della Repubblica, before the others headed back to Prato for a bit and I visited the Chiesa della Santa Trinita down by the river for a while.  Yes, I'm aware I have a bit of a thing with churches.  No, I'm not concerned by it.  Santa Trinita was lovely, too, though a little bit eerie after dark.  The eerie was kind of fun, though, in an odd sort of way.

Later that evening I met up with Mariana and Andrea again for an aperitivo, which is from what I can tell like a cheap students' thing, where you get a basic drink and free reign over a basic sort of buffet.  Needless to say Andrea got two drinks that night, because the 'simple, plain' spritzer he recommended for me was, as expected, gross.  I headed home early because the buses don't run late, I'm a killjoy and I had homework - pick your reasons.  Sunday began with the much-anticipated trip to the Battistero, which was nice, some last-minute shopping at the market and the Piazza della Repubblica, and the exploration of an upscale chocolate shop.  Has anyone here ever seen sugared violets?  Yes, I mean actual flowers that have been dipped in sugar to turn them into sweets.  I'd heard of them, but...well, this place had sugared violets and sugared roses.  The shop clerk was a little confused when I just wanted one of each 'to try' instead of buying them by the kilo like normal people (the first time I mentioned trying one, she handed me a violet to eat straight up), so they threw them in for free with the chocolates I bought!  They're an odd delicacy - it was like having a violet field in my mouth, but the concept of tasting flowers in your mouth rather than your nasal cavity was actually quite pleasant and didn't freak me out like I expected.

My final adventure was an accident, like always.  I was looking for one final church to visit so I could feel less guilty about bailing early because I was tired and cold and had homework when I found myself in a line for what had looked like a church from the outside but which didn't seem to be on the inside.  It cost me 6 euro to get inside the Cappella di Medicee, and as I wandered the crypt I wasn't sure it was worth it.  Then I found the stairs and ascended into the chapel itself.

The Medici family, in their time, were the royal family of Florence and thus Italy, and in a way much of Europe too. They were powerful, produced a Pope or two along their way and were uber-rich beyond our understanding of the word.  So when they decided to build their own private chapel to bury and honour their ancestors, they were thorough.  And holy schmackeroly, were they!  Every surface inlaid with stone mosaics, and not just any stones, semiprecious ones!  Huge ceilings, large tombs and statues for all the big names of the family, the works.  And the most amazing part?  It was TASTEFUL.  No opulence, no overt, grandiose displays of pomposity such as are usually seen when rich people let their money loose.  It was very well done and truly beautiful, making it both awe-inspiring and breath-taking (my breath was so taken that I had to sit down - though...that might have been the foot).

I left Florence early the next morning, taking a train from Firenze Santa Maria Novella at a quarter past nine.  It was an interesting stay I'd had.  Youth hostels always make for new experiences, though the way I ended up in the Frano-Japanese dorm was interesting.  The only other girl who was in there during my stay, albeit for one night, and who wasn't French or Japanese was a Canadian girl studying in Lyon, France, for a year, Louise. Apart from Laure there was also Carole to keep me amused, another older French girl who I chose to stop talking to because she didn't know when to stop... (in my thoughts: 'Carole, it's half past eight in the morning and I'm standing in the corridor in my pajamas and bed hair holding a towel.  Though I'm sure the girls on the second floor are all enjoying the pre-breakfast amusement, can you please figure out a little quicker that you need to run out of things to say so I can please how my shower now?')  You get the best stories from staying in youth hostels.  I'll try and post the final Italy instalment in the next few days - the homework situation has been getting demanding!

With Andrea and Mariana above the city of Florence

Firenze from the Piazza Michaelangiolo

From the steps of Santo Miniato del Monte

Florence

Introducing the Florence Historical Drummers and Flag Tossing Marching Corps Band! 
(Yeah, I made that title up, but they were cool)

The roof of the Battistero

Caelli Lilian in Florence (Italy, Part III)

Florence is a lovely city.  Like everywhere else in Europe, it's full of history, culture and beautiful buildings, but it does have one big flaw.  Florence is essentially one big tourist trap.  What was once a centre of light and culture and art has now become so full of foreign visitors wanting a piece of light and culture and art, mostly for the exclusivity, that the whole city is about catering to the stereotyped desires of the tourists to the point that 'Florence' has become almost impossible to find.

That's not to say, however, that it is impossible.  You just have to be willing to try; the 'discerning tourist', as Laure and I put it yesterday.  Laure was the Franco-Austrian-English-speaking Sorbonne alum, with whom I wandered Florence yesterday and visited several 'key' tourist sites.  Today, free from her (slightly pernicious) influence, travelled alone and did what I love to do most in new cities - wander aimless and let the adventures find me.

I visited Il Duomo, the traiditional main domed church of Firenze; Santa Maria Novella, another big church; the Palazzo Vecchio, a palace-turned-museum; the famous Ponte Vecchio, the bridge-street that crosses the river; St. Mark's English Church; Dante's church; and so many smaller random places that won't even get a mention.  I have a few places on the cards for tomorrow, based on where I couldn't or didn't go today.  I've done a bit of shopping for a few things I wanted and posted a few postcards.

In my wanderings today I found a market in one of the piazzas - an actual market, not just a collection of street vendors, that reminded me a little of the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul.  It was fun to look, even though I knew the prices were inflated tourist ones.  Behind the market I found the bronze boar that Alessandra had told me about and touched its nose.  I also took a coin and pushed it into the boar's mini-waterspout mouth, since that seemed to be the thing to do, and then removed my hand and watched the coin slip from the boar's mouth and into the money-filled grate below the boar's mouth.  Apparently that's a good sign.

I was on my way to the Chiesa dello Santo Spirito today, the Church of the Holy Spirit, since it looked really interesting, when I stumbled upon something else, one of the 'hidden gems' that I always look for in a city.  Apparently this church was English - as in, British.  The open door of St. Mark's bore an invitation to enter, so I did.  The interior decoration was fascinting, the oddest melding of cultures and religions that I've seen anywhere, very strange.  I realised after a while there was a service happening in the corner for a congregation of two, so I stood and watched most of it and quietly and unobtrusively as I could.  When it was finished the priest quickly walked out from behind the altar and through a door that obviously led to the church office or dressingroom, and I was a little surprised at his abruptness.  A minute later, though, just as I was turning away, he reappeared, stripped of his ceremonial mass robes and garbed in a plain white one, and approached me.  "Hello.  Do you speak English?"  He told me some interesting stories about the church, asked about why I was in Europe and Florence with my Australian accent (nb. first time anyone has correctly recognised my accent, since my ESL friends don't have the experience to recognise accents and even to many native speakers, especially Americans, my accent is so nondescript as to e unplaceable) and invited me to come to the main mass on Sunday.  If I can get there on time I might actually do it, since attending Sunday Mass at an English church in Florence would be an interesting experience to add to the list.

The youth hostel is not bad, though the hike from the road and the long bus trip into town are sort of downers, and the experience is interesting, though the French girls are getting a bit wearing - they're all very opinionated and love the sound of their own voices (they make me look - and act! - very quiet by comparison), so I've stopped initiating conversations with them.  I did meet a cool South African guy yesterday over breakfast, and there have been some nice Canadians around too.  It's all part of the adventure.

Il Duomo

Laure and I were admiring the...artisanry

Lucky-nosed boar

One of my random-wandering streets

Views of Florence from Ponte Vecchio

These are woven - yes, woven - out of grass reeds by the owner of the legs you see in the photo

A typical (yummy) Italian lunch near San Spirito

Views of Ponte Vecchio (from Ponte Trinita)

Santa Maria Novella Church

 

Una historia di Romeo e Giulietta (Italy, Part II)

Lago di Garda and the Alps

Tuesday also began late. Beixi made a giant pot of tea (I mean a literal pot here) to wake us all from our groggy reveries so we could dress and head out for the day. We walked down to the bottom of the garden to look at Lago di Garda first. It really is huge – almost like a small sea –and the Alps surround the far side of the lake like a suspended blue backdrop, topped with snow. It was a breathtaking view, and I’d love to explore them more closely someday.

We drove into Desenzano in the morning, where they hold a market every Tuesday.  We had fun wandering through all the stalls of clothes, scarves, shoes, ceramics, cheeses and everything else you could imagine.  After half an hour or so, Fede and Ale led us to a small sandwich shop where we all ordered piadins – pizza bread folded over into the form of a sandwich with fillings, or so I understood.  We sat by the lake and enjoyed the peaceful view while we ate, before jumping back into the car for a road trip to the nearest city for the afternoon.

I knew I’d heard the name before, but I wasn’t quite sure why, though I thought it had something to do with Shakespeare.  Well, I was right.  Verona was the setting for Shakespeare’s eternally famous romance, Romeo and Juliet.  While I have to confess I find Romeo and Juliet more than a little pointless (I guess I don’t like tragedy), it was still exciting.  After some fun attempts at navigating our way there via iPhone map, we finally made it into the city centre and found a parking space, in the ‘whatever works’ way that seems to govern Italian driving.

Me and the city of Verona from the Castello

We found some steps and began the hike up to the level of the castle, Castello Sant’Angelo, I believe.  Despite everyone’s misgivings about my foot, for which they were very concerned when they learned of it, I made it up without incident (down was another matter – Silvio hanging on my right arm, Alessandra supporting my left).  The views really were lovely, and Silvio had good fun being tour guide by virtue of his recent visit to Verona.  After a few minutes we headed back down and crossed the river into the old city to begin exploring.

A coffee and chocolate stop was definitely necessary to recharge the batteries and rest my feet, so we stopped in at a little gelataria near the town square.  After a lazy half-hour, we were feeling better and ready to go to our next stop – Juliet’s house.

Padlocks at la Casa di Giulietta

The view from the balcony

Unlike the movie Letters to Juliet that Eric and I watched so many years ago, there was no wall full of love letters or broken-heart letters written to this canonical figure of romance, but there was a wall full of padlocks - padlocks on which had been written the names of two sweethearts who had sealed up the padlock and thrown away the key.  There was also a bronze statue of Juliet, and a balcony...I decided to pay to go in and explore Juliet's house, starting with several photos from the balcony.  The house was nothing particularly exciting, a small museum of the time period of the story with some souvenirs from one of the early movie adaptations, but it was more about what the house, the courtyard, the area represented, this ideal of romance, this perfect, true love that never occurred in this house or the story, but which has become its signature.

We walked to the Arena after that, a Colosseum-style Roman forum, but decided due to the late hour and the price not to go inside, as we could get a pretty good idea from the outside and the parking ticket was due to expire. Together we walked back to the car and piled inside for the drive back to Lago di Garda, wondering if it was really a good idea to let Silvio navigate.  Letting him make dinner wasn't a question - Silvio decided to make a risotto while the rest of us chopped vegetables and cleaned up.  

Me sucking at bowling

Silvio and Alessandra

Afterwards we headed to the nearby bowling alley for a couple of hilarious, disco-style games of bowling (in which Beixi and I both sucked miserably but I managed to round out the night with two consecutive strikes in the final few frames).  This of course ended in a loopy set of teenagers eating tea and biscuits, watching MTV and dancing to We No Speak Americano at 1 in the morning (and generally having a wonderful time).

Boarding the train to Milano

It wasn't so fun the next morning - we were up at 7: 30am to eat, pack our bags and clean the house in time to be at the station for the others to catch the 9:10 train to Milano.  I wasn't so lucky - my first connection for the next leg of my voyage was at 9:50am.  Desenzano del Garda to Verona, followed by Verona - Padova (though I think I hopped on the wrong train, 20 minutes early, but no-one commented or stopped me) and finally another train from Padova to Firenze, arriving  just after 1:30pm.  The next challenge was the worst part - Firenze S. M. Novella Station to Youth Hostel!  Due to my lack of knowledge of how to get there and the lack of outer Firenze on the map I bought, it was past 3pm before I finally made it onto the right bus, got off at the right stop (second time around) and found the right street.  But when I thought I was done - oh, no!  It was a 15-minute hike up the driveway of the hostel to the aptly-named VILLA Camerata.  I was tired enough and it was raining hard enough outside that I stayed in the hostel for the afternooon catching up on emails and a bit of homework, only venturing outside for a (long) trek to find dinner-food, before befriending an English-speaking Austrian-inhabiting French Sorbonne alumni in my dorm.  Part III of the Italy Adventures, featuring my first two days in Firenze, coming tomorrow!