Rome: That Light

Sam and I had both heard from artists that the light in Italy was just "different." It had a different quality to it. We were skeptical but thought it could be true…something about the atmosphere at sea level or the humidity…? And when we got to Rome, we didn't notice anything immediately different—but at certain times of day, or on certain streets, we would suddenly turn to each other and say, "Look at that! There's that light again." Maybe it is from the color of the buildings, those warm surfaces for the light to bounce around on? Or maybe it is from the angle of the sun when it's low in the sky. But it was there, and it made everything feel just a bit foreign, so you couldn't ever forget: this is ROME!

By the way, this is my last set of pictures, the ones that didn't fit anywhere else, and I'm sure we can all breathe a sigh of relief now! I feel like a wild-eyed fanatic that has cornered you and forced you to sit through interminable slides of my travels. But you can leave anytime, you know!

Anyway. Some of my favorite moments in Rome, as in London, were those quiet times I had by myself, with nowhere specific to go and no one depending on me. I took naps at the hotel in the hot part of the day, and then walked for miles and miles, wandering into stores or stopping for awhile to sit on a bench and finally finish this book. (That was a strange thing: I would be transported back to Germany as I read, and then emerge to find myself…in Italy? Blinking in that Italian light. Very disorienting.)

You can kind of see the light here. That glow along the houses, coming down and warming up even the edges of the blue shadows. You could walk in downtown Salt Lake at the same time of day, and it  would just feel…different.

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Rome: the Hills

It seemed like all the tourists I talked to in Rome were doing a "three days in Rome" sort of itinerary. They were going to take in the highlights and then hit Venice and Florence and the Amalfi Coast. And I suppose, if we'd been planning an Italian vacation, maybe that's what we would have done too—how cool to see the countryside and the canals and all those other great things! But with Sam's classes and meetings in Rome itself, it just made more sense for us to stay there and not waste our precious time getting from place to place. So we spent all our eight days in the same city. And actually, I was really glad we did, because it felt like we got to see so MANY more things than just the usual! It felt like we actually got to know Rome—a little. (I know. Eight days isn't that much, obviously—but we really did feel almost at home, by the end!)

But. I read about a town in the hills near Rome, just an hour train ride away, and we figured it would be fun to ride the train anyway—so we spent one of our days visiting the medieval hill town of Orvieto. 

And it was maybe our favorite day of all! I don't know, I can't really choose. But the thing I loved so much about Orvieto was that it was PACKED with those sort of hidden places I love so much. A whole town full of them, really. Every street felt like a story waiting to happen, the beginning of an acquaintance, a glimpse into another world. My mind was going nonstop, imagining the lives of the people that make their homes along these winding, sun-warmed, impossibly darling little cobblestone streets.

I am always happy to ride a train so I can report back to the train-lovers in the family. I have always [or, since I had little boys, anyway] dreamed of riding a Maglev or a Bullet Train with them. Or the TGV. But, this was just a regular old train. Still fun though, to be at the train station and see all the comings and goings.

The countryside was beautiful. So many interesting little jumbles of towns, clinging to hillsides or tossed carelessly along green valleys.

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Rome: Old Friends

One of my friends asked me if it felt like seeing a celebrity, seeing the Colosseum, and…yes, kind of, but it was even more than that. I think that's maybe because we learned about it during our Architecture Unit a few years ago, and during that time we also got a set of tiny plastic architectural landmarks which the kids would play with like they were people. Especially Seb, as I recall: "Colosseum is riding on the train with Arc de Triomphe!" he'd say, for example. So it almost felt more like meeting an old friend.

My mom was worried about it being disappointing to see all these famous monuments just sitting there in the middle of a modern city. "Was there a shopping mall across the street?" she asked us somewhat worriedly. Well, there were gelaterias and apartments and so forth, of course. But the Colosseum is such an imposing structure, it can hold its own. And you get to walk past the ancient Fora of Julius and Augustus Caesar on the way, to get you in the proper mindset. It was dusk as we walked down the street for our tour, and I found it quite satisfyingly awe-inspiring to approach the Colosseum on foot and then gradually see it looming over us until it filled the whole sky:

Our tour was at night, which was very nice, temperature-wise, since the days were soul-sappingly hot. I was surprised to see all the excavation of the tunnels and rooms under the arena floor, since in pictures I think I'd always seen just a grassy field in the middle.

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Rome: In Which I Use the Word "Statuary"

We signed up for a tour of the Vatican Museums with one of those groups that gets in early so you don't have to wait in line, and even though Sam and I generally like to do things on our own, we were SO glad to have a guide in these museums. There is so much to see that no matter how amazing everything is, your eyes start to glaze over after awhile, and our tour guide helped us know what we should focus on—and (maybe more importantly) what to pass by quickly!

We got there quite early in the morning, so Sam and I wandered around the empty St. Peter's square for awhile, waiting for our tour to start. It's so enormous you can't even capture it in a photo! I remember learning about this square (designed by Bernini) when we studied architecture in school. It's amazing to have all these famous things all crowded together: Bernini's piazza, Maderno's facade, Raphael's architectural plans, Michelangelo's dome—not to mention all the amazing things inside the Basilica!

The piazza is surrounded by two beautiful arched colonnades, like two arms reaching out to hug someone—or as Bernini said, to "give an open-armed, maternal welcome to all Catholics, confirming their faith; to heretics, reconciling them with the Church; and to the infidels, enlightening them about the true faith." Not sure if I would count as a "heretic" to Bernini or not, but they are lovely, welcoming arms all the same.

Once we got inside Vatican City, we zipped through several long corridors (pausing only to admire an unwrapped mummy in the Egyptian section—very interesting) so we could enjoy the Sistine Chapel in relative seclusion before it became packed wall-to-wall with people. The Sistine Chapel, of course, is what everyone has heard of and what everyone comes to see, so I was prepared to be disappointed by it. You can't take pictures inside the chapel (interesting backstory here), but just for reference, it looks like this:

Image from Wikipedia

I knew this was the place with the painted ceiling done by Michelangelo, and the picture of God touching Adam's finger, but I didn't know (or had forgotten) that there were so many other panels showing so many other scenes and people! Our guide had gone over it while we were waiting to get into the Vatican, so we knew mostly what we'd be seeing.

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Rome: the Hidden Places

One of my favorite things in Rome (and Orvieto, the other city we visited) was finding little hidden, secluded areas that were tucked away inside buildings or behind doors. There were some similar places I loved in Berlin—courtyards only visible from the inside of buildings which, from the front, appeared forbidding and impenetrable. I guess this love of the hidden places is nothing unique to me: it's the attraction of the secret garden or the little turret window or the turning bookshelf-door in the library of an old house. I'm sure Sam has a Design Principle name for this attraction, for the innate appeal of a path that leads our eye and makes us want to follow it into the forest. And maybe it's nothing unique to Rome either; maybe every city has its hidden gardens and quiet courtyards, places the casual visitor never sees. But maybe because I had so much time in Rome to just wander, off the usual tourist track (though I did the tourist track TOO, and loved it), I felt like I caught more glimpses of these spots, and found myself more intrigued by them, than I have in other cities.

To start with, there were the doors themselves. So many of them, and with such varied appearance. This sort of imposing double door was everywhere, and made it seem like the most ordinary sort of apartment building might hide the most wonderful treasure inside.

Then there were the rooftop gardens. Everywhere we went, we noticed lit gardens and terraces on top of  buildings. Again, this is probably something you'd find in any big city (and so would likely be unremarkable to a New Yorker), but it just made me feel WILD with curiosity! Who lives up there? What kind of parties are they having out on their terraces? What are their lives like and what are they seeing up there, looking out across the rooftops? We did get to see one—we got to go up to someone's top-floor apartment for a cooking class we took—and I loved it, but it just made me want so much to see MORE!

View of other terraces and balconies, from a rooftop terrace. That golden sun on those iron arches!

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Rome: I begin to love it

I felt almost apologetic when I realized this trip to Rome was really going to happen and I had to start mentioning it to people. I already felt like it was too much good fortune for any normal person when I got to go to London and Berlin in April, and now here we were jaunting off across the world again only a few months later! Sam had been asked to teach a class way back at the beginning of the year, but then it looked like it wouldn't go through, and I was pretty sure I couldn't leave the kids again, and—well, maybe the details are boring, but anyway the stars and the babysitters aligned, and suddenly (just as we were getting home from Yellowstone!) we had one week to get ready and go! The preparation (for me) was a jumble of laundry, and sleeplessness, and losing things, and forgetting things and remembering them at the last minute. And Sam was just frantically trying to prepare twenty-one hours' worth of class material. But finally we were on the plane and then we were flying over the Alps!—and realizing we were truly going to Italy. 

There was a bit of uncertainty and grumpiness that first day, I'm sorry to say (speaking in the passive voice so as not to assign blame to anyone in particular)—probably a combination of worry for the kids, and lack of sleep, and abject terror induced by the taxi ride from the airport (which was actually kind of fun, looking back on it—darting forays down crowded, one-way streets; and wholesale ignoring of traffic lights; and squeezing with complete abandon through impossibly tight alleys). We emerged from the taxi feeling dazed and hot and foreign, and after dropping off our suitcases, wandered around in the Borghese Gardens in a dutiful effort to stay awake till nighttime.

Everything was SO dry. The grasses were dead and the trees were brittle, and there were strange insects screeching above big bare patches of earth. It couldn't have been more different from Hyde Park or the Tiergarten if it had been on Mars!

And then there was the garbage…everywhere! Piles of it overflowing from dumpsters and spilling off of street corners, heaped up in ditches and cascading down gutters. It smelled so bad you could actually taste it, and there were little flies rising up in clouds from oozing bags and overturned cans.

But then, on the way from the airport, there had been a glimpse of THIS…:

And (if you could tear your eyes away from the acres of garbage), there were whole streets lined with flowering trees, like THIS:

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