Rome: Nov 30: Departure, and snow

We flew out of Rome on Tuesday morning. It was an uneventful day in Rome: breakfast at the hotel, train to the airport, and waiting for our plane, which was delayed a bit more than an hour. The plane was delayed due to weather at Gatwick, where it came from. This was the first hint that the day would be exciting.

Indeed, we landed at London Gatwick in the snow. Customs was a cinch. We caught a train to Victoria, stopped by work for a late lunch, and grabbed a bus home. Gosh, it was cold. And our apartment was cold as well; it took many hours with our heat on full blast to return it to a pleasant temperature. Six hours after we got home, we were still in many layers of clothes and often walking over to stand next to the radiators. By the next morning, however, the apartment was comfortable (we kept it so the rest of our time in London).

Incidentally, the flight was mostly full, but Di Yin and I managed to claim a row to ourselves.

It was lucky we returned when we did: Gatwick airport was closed due to the weather the following two days. It kept snowing on and off during this time. (The storm wasn't actually bad in my mind; it's just that the Gatwick is a smaller airport and also I don't think Great Britain is used to dealing with snowstorms.)

I took some pictures this day, mostly of the snow. Di Yin also took a handful. The latter link goes to her first picture from this day (picture #465). If you're in slideshow mode and see a picture of people Di Yin recognized on the overland rail or pictures from Thanksgiving, you've cycled back to the beginning of the album and are viewing pictures unconnected to our Rome trip.

Rome: Nov 29: Vatican, Saint Peter's, and more

On Monday, unlike our day exploring Ancient Rome and not wanting to wait in line at the Colosseum, I planned ahead. I bought tickets online for the Vatican. Hence, after breakfast and the metro ride to the Vatican, we got to skip the lines! :) Lines or not, I was disappointed the Vatican doesn't stamp passports.

I took a lot of pictures in the Vatican. They provide a good sense of the place. The Vatican Museums are vast, probably equal in size to the British Museum, which took me three visits to explore. We spent over 3.5 hours in the Vatican, and saw some of the museum only perfunctorily. Their collection is large and not limited to religious oil paintings, altarpieces, iconography, and religious artifacts. They also have an astounding amount of Greek, Roman, and Etruscan items, sculptures by Bellini, and numerous reliefs, tombs, and tapestries. Furthermore, offshoots of the museum have exhibits on Australian aborigines (!), the Vatican mail system, the Vatican monetary system, the pope's vehicles, and recent art. In terms of recent art, they have 19th and 20th century art and modern art, including Max Weber, Diego Riviera, and Salvador Dali, and also cubist and abstract pieces, all with varying obviousness of connection to Christianity.

In the postal museum, I learned the history of the Vatican's mail system. The Vatican issues about half a dozen commemorative stamps each year in honor of popes, saints' anniversaries, international events (olympics, world's fairs, eucharistic congresses). Interestingly and oddly, some of the stamps designed in the 19th century weren't ever used as stamps.

In the monetary section, I learned the Vatican used to issue its own lira (on par with the Italian lira) and now uses and mints Euro coins.

As for the Michelanglo's Sistine Chapel, it wasn't as impressive or awe-inspiring as I expected. Nevertheless, it's commendable for its size--it's a massive undertaking for (mostly) one man. Plus, it's nice to sit and simply take it all in. I was surprised to see that The Last Judgment (on the wall) has a lot of non-Christian-canon imagery. For instance, there are Charon and Minos from Dante's Inferno.

I learned that the Sistine Chapel was restored in the 1980s (yes, that recently) and that the restoration was controversial at the time. After using fancy imaging technologies, the restorers think they identified Michelangelo's original colors, separating his work from those of later restorers, and returned the frescoes to their original colorings. These tones were quite a bit brighter, more lustrous, than people were used to (after looking at the faded frescoes for too long), and many claimed these new colors couldn't have been what Michelangelo selected. The controversy, however, has mostly died down as experts have analyzed the data and techniques used by the restorers and agreed with the conclusions and result.

By the way, I decided I couldn't live in the Vatican. Everything is too heavily decorated.

Incidentally, Di Yin also took many pictures in the Vatican and out and about this day. The link goes to her first picture from this day (picture #311). When you see a picture captioned "Back at the hotel at last" (picture #464), you're done with her pictures for the day. I'll link to the next day's pictures in the following post.

Hungry after our long stint in the Vatican, we hunted for food, eventually selecting Ristorante Pizzeria Porta Castello.

From lunch, we walked to Saint Peter's Basilica, traveling through Piazza San Pietro (Saint Peter's Square) on the way in. I know I've seen pictures of the square full during Christmas, but the piazza seems so enormous to me, I can't fathom how many people it can hold. Likewise, the basilica is a mind-bogglingly large space. (Yes, my mind feels boggled.)

From the basilica, we decided to walk to our hotel, stopping for dinner along the way. Though it would be a long walk (over an hour even if we didn't stop to look at things or eat), at least half of it would pass through parts of the city we never saw before.

We first walked along the River Tevere, which is quite dirty. On the other side of the river, we strolled by assorted sites, most notably Campo de'Fiori, Rome's oldest food market. Although we arrived too late for the market--the vendors had packed up--we saw that the area around it is exciting and thriving. Near the market we found a tasty bakery. After we finished our snacks from it, we decided they were so good that we bought more, planning to eat them on the plane the following day.

In this area, I wish I got to see Borromini's corridor ("perspective gallery") (scroll down a bit). It appears to be a great optical illusion, but Palazzo Spada, which has it, was shut when I passed.

We walked through the historic Jewish ghetto/quarter. The area is more a run-down version of the similarly medieval nearby area Campo de'Fiori but with many fewer shops. There are lots of kosher restaurants, however.

Tired, we stopped by the Pantheon to sit for a bit, then headed home, hunting for food along the way. But, we got lost, were frustrated (it turns we walked in the exact opposite direction we were supposed to for several blocks), found ourselves, walked to the nearest metro station, took it most of the way home, and found food for real.

Rome: Nov 28: Misc Rome

This day we hit a large number of sites in Rome with no coherent pattern. During the day, I took quite a few pictures (though fewer than on other days of our trip). Likewise, Di Yin took many pictures. The latter link goes to her first picture from this day (picture #183). When you see a picture of me putting money into a train ticket machine in order to avoid walking home in the rain (picture #307), you're done with her pictures for the day. I'll link to the next day's pictures in the following post.

First thing after breakfast, we trotted down to visit the notable church Santa Maria Maggiore, a church we walked past the previous day but didn't go in. As I read and heard more about it, I realized how prominent it is among Rome's churches (parts of it date to the 5th century, and multiple popes are buried there), and decided I should visit. I'm glad I did; it's an impressive, ornate church, with a nice blend of styles (Renaissance, Baroque, etc.). It's got history, such as mosaics that range in date of creation from the 5th to the 18th centuries. It was an atmospheric place to explore at mass, listening to chanting in Italian or Latin (I'm not sure which).

After the church, we walked to the metro station near our hotel and took it a couple of stops to the Spanish Steps. The area around the Spanish Steps is a nice area for strolling, with more pedestrianized streets than I'd yet seen in Rome. The streets were crowded with shops selling luxury fashion goods.

In the vicinity of the Spanish Steps, we visited another impressive church, Sant'Andrea delle Fratte, though this one didn't look like much from the outside. We also climbed to the top of the Steps to take in our first view of Rome's skyline, then entered the church at the top, Trinita die Monti. Though this church, lacking ceiling murals, was less impressive, it had nice murals/mosaics along the side.

After visiting three churches on this Sunday, I can say I like visiting churches in Rome during mass (if they let you in). They're very atmospheric. The first and third church had lovely choral singing, making the experience more magical. This compensates for the fact that during mass you're not allowed to walk around and look at things up close.

As we left the area, we noticed a model posing on the Spanish Steps. Both professional and amateur photographers took pictures of her. I admit it is quite a backdrop.

We then began walking to our scheduled noontime meeting with a friend of one of Di Yin's friends. On the way we passed the Piazza del Popolo, a large, remarkable plaza. The friend, S, was doing research in Rome for the year as part of an academic exchange program. Once we met him, my picture frequency slowed dramatically.

S brought us on a tour through the backside of Borghese gardens, passing the National Gallery of Modern Art, to show us his residence in the British School. The little of the gardens that I saw were attractive, and the National Gallery appropriately stately, but what shocked me the most was that he was living in an equally-stately porticoed building that could just as well have housed the National Gallery! It even has art on display. (Okay, the building is smaller than the National Gallery of Modern Art, but it's no less impressive architecturally.) He gave us a full tour. It felt like a large mansion/villa. Its central garden felt like a cross between a Mediterranean courtyard and one of the quads in Oxford/Cambridge.

S then led us back through the piazza to a lunch place, then from the lunch place into the old center of the city. Rome's city center reminded me of Barcelona's old town, with lots of cobblestone streets, small, hidden plazas, and no cars. It's cute.

One reason S brought us to the city center was to show us his favorite gelato shop, Giolitti. It was good, exactly on par with the excellent San Crispino from the previous day.

After gelato, S left us, and Di Yin and I continued exploring the city center, beginning with Piazza Navona (said to be the social centre of the city). The piazza has three appealingly extravagant Baroque fountains and a street market.

Incidentally, it had been drizzling on and off for most of the afternoon. We saw lots of umbrella vendors emerge.

After exploring Piazza Navona and some surrounding streets, we trotted over to the Pantheon. Though dating from the first century, it's amazingly well preserved and remains majestic, with something magical and right about its interior dimensions. We sat for a while to rest and enjoy the space. That said, it's not perfectly preserved--for instance, the center of the floor was roped off because the roof leaks. To me, by the way, the Pantheon was even more striking because I didn't think they could build domes that large in the first century CE.

In the rain, we hunted for a dinner restaurant. We followed a zig-zag path (partially because I had trouble with directions). Somehow we walked along Via del Corso, a big shopping street, and also down another big shopping street (Via Fontina?), and also hit both the Spanish Steps and Trevi Fountain. At some point we found Sant Andrea restaurant near the Spanish steps and decided it looked good. Indeed, it was good. By the time we left, the clouds had truly opened and it was pouring. We decided to take the metro to our hotel (even though it wouldn't have been that long a walk), a good decision as even with the metro's assistance my shoes got wet enough that they were still a bit damp the next day.

Rome: Nov 27: Ancient Roman Buildings

After a late start and a basic buffet breakfast at our hotel, we left to explore Rome. I took a lot of pictures this day, and also managed to record from memory our rough walking route. This is actually the only day on the trip I managed to do it--all other days I either followed someone and didn't pay attention to how I got places or got lost and hence didn't know where I was for a while.

Incidentally, Di Yin also took many pictures. The link goes to her first picture from this day (picture #15). When you see a picture captioned "Home at last" (referring to our hotel) (picture #182), you're done with her pictures for the day. I'll link to the next day's pictures in the following post.

This day, we explored the ancient Roman center of the city, especially the Colosseum, the Forum, and Capitoline Hill, and also Trevi Fountain.

As we walked to the Colosseum, we passed lots of CGIL union marchers, many blocks long. We also saw a few churches. See the pictures for details.

We found the Colosseum, built in the first center C.E., but decided not to wait in the line to enter, instead deciding to find lunch. Before and after lunch, we wandered around the edge of the Forum, a complex built in the first couple centuries C.E. (We tried to find the entrance but never did. It turns out my guidebook was out of date.) After seeing it and other buildings, we didn't actually make it back to the Colosseum in time to go inside.

We walked north-west to Trevi Fountain, an impressive sight (more so than the Colosseum for instance), and stopped at the nearby San Crispino Gelateria, a famous gelato shop. The gelato was perfect! The sorbets were ethereally light yet bursting with flavor. We ended up trying seven flavors.

After more walking and dinner, we returned home. I enjoyed seeing the sites this day, but ended up sad I didn't go in anyplace.

Rome: Nov 26: Arrival

On the morning of our flight to Rome, a Friday, we stopped by my work for a quick breakfast and to make sandwiches for the plane for lunch. When I say quick, I mean it--it turned out we had only ten minutes to eat. We then caught a train to Gatwick Airport. I like watching the world go by from a train, especially under blue skies like this day. Gatwick Airport's train station is in the airport terminal--much more convenient/a shorter walk than from Heathrow's train station to the terminals themselves.

We flew easyJet, a discount carrier. Our plane was late, which might've been a blessing because when scheduling our timing I didn't realize that gates can be up to a twenty minute walk from the security checkpoint. I wasn't keeping an eye on the time but I think we had enough time that we would've made the flight without hurrying even if it wasn't delayed. Boarding was, as Di Yin described it, "a cattle call." easyJet doesn't assign seats, so once the gates opened, people jockeyed their way forward. It was definitely more polite than it would have been in China but it certainly lacked the orderliness of Southwest.

The flight was easy. As we landed, I noticed Italy near Rome looks like California: sea and ground, hills and plains, and the coloring and style of the vegetation. No wonder people say the bay area has a Mediterranean climate and geography.

We landed at Leonardo Da Vinci Fiumicino Airport, Rome's main airport. It was surprisingly empty on this Friday afternoon. I can't explain it. Immigration/customs was the easiest ever. The staff-person barely even looked to see if my passport had a picture in it, and asked no questions.

We took a train into downtown Rome. I began seriously taking pictures at this point. Di Yin, meanwhile, had been taking pictures since we arrived at Gatwick Airport. The latter link goes to her first picture from this trip (which happens to picture #4 in this album). When you see a picture of Di Yin posed in front of our hotel window (picture #15), you're done with her pictures for the day. I'll link to the next day's pictures in the following post.

Once downtown, we walked a couple of blocks to the hotel where we'd stay for the length of our trip: Yes Hotel. It was a perfectly nice, comfortable place to stay; certainly not luxurious but exactly the level of quality we intended and expected when we booked the hotel. Modern, linear decor, neutral colors, soft lighting. I took pictures of the hotel and our room on the following day.

We left our hotel to walk around and find food. We passed some large, old buildings (ruins?)--they were hard to make out in the dark (I'd photograph them another day)--and a piazza. Eventually we decided upon dinner at L'Angolo di Napoli, a pizzeria/restaurant. The food made us happy; it was a good indication that random restaurants in Rome are good. Details are in the pictures.

Rome Overview

Di Yin and I spent three full days in Rome, leaving for Italy on Friday, November 26, 2010, and returning on Tuesday, November 30. I liked the trip and the city. Below I summarize my impressions of the city. I often found myself mentally comparing it to Barcelona, but I think that's because it's the only other mainland European city where I spent any substantial amount of time in recent memory. In the discussion below, I'll attempt to explain my impression of Rome on its own terms, not in reference to this artificial comparison point.

Food
First up, the food. I enjoyed all the food: pastas, pizzas, meat dishes (secondi piatti), and gelatos. Even those restaurants that weren't uniformly tasty had at least one dish that was better than simply good, i.e., something remarkably good and certainly better than most versions I've had. Also, in particular, the Romans know how to do sauces such as tomato sauces or wine sauces. Yes, even simple tomato sauce is better in Rome. In addition, I like how the dishes are balanced. Roman chefs know moderation: for instance, in pasta dishes with meats, cream sauces, etc., they don't use too much meat or cream, thus keeping the dish light.

Incidentally, restaurant menus list whether the fish or, often, the vegetables were previously frozen. :)

Getting Around / The Feel of the City
I liked walking along the cobblestone streets and through the scattered piazzas in Rome's large historic sections (just as I enjoyed doing the same in Barcelona). They're atmospheric and, with fewer cars than the rest of the city, nice for strolling. Best yet, the older section of the city is large; it would take at least fifty minutes to walk a straight line across at its widest point. And who walks straight lines in parts of town like this anyway?

Outside this area, there are still many interesting sites (more on that later), but walking was harder: outside the (mostly pedestrianized) medieval section, the streets, all wide enough to have two (or more) lanes, are in use. If you as a pedestrian are at a crosswalk and have the walk signal, the cars keep coming. They don't stop as in California and wait for you to cross the street. You must be fearless and begin crossing at a measured, predictable pace and trust the cars will stop for you. They do. Nevertheless, despite this negative, because there are things to see throughout the city and because we quickly adopted to the crossing customs, we often chose to walk rather than take public transit.

The only form of public transit we took was the metro. It was efficient, but as there are only two lines, it doesn't go everywhere you want to go. In particular, it doesn't go to the medieval part of the city--what I think of as the nicest section--and consequently if you're there and tired of walking, you must take something else (bus, taxi, etc.) or stop to sit for a while. By the way, the metro trains are fine but the stations need polish: they require long underground walks through tunnels that feel like they're still under construction.

Sites
There are old buildings everywhere in Rome, not just in the cobblestoned medieval/Renaissance section. Rome's architecture is the highlight of this trip for me. When I first wrote the previous sentence, I tried following it up with "especially" and then listing some sites I particularly remembered, but I found my list growing to cover pretty much all the famous sites we visited. I decided not to bother listing them here.

It's neat walking around and stumbling upon old buildings, whether from the Italian Renaissance or old Roman ones dating back from around the time of Christ. Colonnaded buildings, fancy churches, ancient temples (sometimes adopted by Christianity and rebranded as a church), old ruins, and historic city walls abound. And it's not just the large structures that make Rome so absorbing but also the flourishes: the odd fresco on the side of a building, the statues in piazzas, the reliefs on street corners and on eaves. I was particularly fascinated by seeing how old structures get incorporated into new, such as how a segment of a Roman wall became part of a building's wall or how the corner of an older flat-stone building got reused as the corner of a not-quite-as-old brick building.

With the Vatican making Rome the center of the Catholic world, churches in particular are omnipresent. Imagine a checkerboard overlaid onto a grid of streets and you'll be an idea of how common they are. Sometimes a church's exterior belies the quality of its interior; sometimes it does not.

Incidentally, I was amused to see lots of hotels, again a higher density than in other cities I've visited. At first I thought this might just have been the section of the city I was in, but no--they're everywhere (though nevertheless not as common as churches).

Language
Language was not a problem. Rome seems to be a tourist-oriented city; most of the people with whom we interacted (hotel clerks, restaurant waiters, and museum staff) all spoke English (or at least enough to communicate easily with us).

Shopping
Rome seems to be a fashion hot-spot. People dress well. We saw a great many clothing shops/boutiques, a higher density than I remember seeing in any other city. Relatedly, Di Yin, who's certainly been shopping in Manhattan, was impressed with the beauty of the shoes for sale.

Costs
Hotels and food are expensive. I can't speak to much else. The clothing covered a wide range, though it tended toward what I would call expensive. The only form of local public transit I took, the metro, was cheap.

Neat Observations

• While Euro notes are identical from country to country, Euro coins differ. Here are pictures of the different two-euro coins; use the navigational bar on the left of that page to view other denominations in various countries.
• There are sometimes pedals in the floor of bathrooms that, when pressed, turn the faucet on (with pressure corresponding to how hard they're pressed). There is no handle on the faucet itself. In addition to providing the benefit of not having to touch the faucet after washing your hands (to turn it off), this mechanism also ensures that faucets cannot be left running unintentionally.
• People here smoke as much (not more) as those in London, but they smoke unfiltered cigarettes so it smells more.
• A number of statues throughout the city have wolves in them (certainly a reference to Romulus and Remus).
• There are many always-on drinking fountains everywhere.
• Rome's postcards are more advanced, more sophisticated, than those in other countries I've visited. I saw two types of postcards that I'd never seen before: panoramic postcards and archaeology postcards. Panoramic postcards are postcards that fold out to 1.5 feet long, yielding a full panorama of a place. Archaeology postcards look like regular greeting cards with some parts of the cover cut-out. Inside the card is an image of what the archaeological site (e.g., the Colosseum) looks like now. If you look at the cover, you see a rendition of the site in its heyday, with the cut-out portions (showing the card's inside) revealing parts of the ruins that remain in roughly their original appearance. These cards put the existing ruins into context. Sadly, I didn't allocate time to shop for/select any postcards of either type, but I'm nevertheless impressed with the designs' ingenuity.