ORD DCA MAD: April 2009

Happy Easter to all. I am back from my 8 day trip to Italy, which was fantastic. I want to go back!

We flew from Madrid to Rome. From the airport, you have to take a train to the city center. As an Italian pointed out, the train doesn't take more time than the metro ride from the center of Madrid to the airport. But the metro doesn't cost 11 euros.

We were staying by the Termini train station at Night and Day Roma, a B&B run by Monica, a charming Italian woman. She was very helpful, giving us two maps, one she marked up with the sights and another with restaurant recommendations. Between that and Rick Steves' Italy (the third traveller with me and Allison), we were covered.

We bought a Roma Pass, which gives you free admission to two sights (we used it on Colosseum/Palatine Hill/Roman Forum and the Borghese Gallery) and a three day transit pass. The metro in Rome doesn't seem to be that useful for getting between the major tourist attractions in the city center, although a third line is currently under construction.

Our first stop that evening was the Spanish Steps. Really, they were a letdown. Just a set of stairs where people congregate. But you have to see them, I suppose.

We were hungry and made our way to a restaurant recommended by Rick. We were not disappointed. After dinner we went to the Trevi Fountain, which was not a disappointment, especially at night. After leaving my typical European tip at dinner (brown coins and perhaps a dime if I feel generous), the smallest coin I had was 50 cents. I tossed it behind me into the fountain anyway. The money does go to the poor, so that's good.

From Trevi, we made our way to Giolitti, a gelateria. We got huge cones topped with whipped cream. I think the gelato was good, but I ate too much and thought I might get sick. People who saw me stumbling through the streets and sitting down probably thought I was drunk. We found a bus to Termini, which luckily for us is the main hub for the buses and the intersection of the two lines of the metro. On the bus there was a group of singing German schoolchildren, which is not pleasant when you feel like vomiting.

I had planned to set out early Friday morning, perhaps to see the Ara Pacis, but I ended up just chatting with Monica for a long time. Allison and I saw Santa Maria Maggiore, a church with elaborate mosaics very close to where we were staying. We also hit up St. Peter in Chains, home to Michelangelo's Moses and the relic of the chains that imprisoned St. Peter.

Our next stop was the Colosseum. The way the Colosseum has been preserved, it is much cooler outside than inside. We had downloaded some audioguides from Rick, so that was nice. I hate paying for audioguides.

For lunch we stopped in a café recommended by Rick. As was often the case, when they saw our book they got very excited and offered us a special menu and free drinks. I think for a small restaurant, especially in this economic climate, being in Rick Steves means that you have made it, although you then have to deal with all the American tourists.

After lunch we visited the Palatine Hill and Roman Forum, considered one sight in combination with the Colosseum for our Roma Pass, which was sweet. The Palatine Hill is where many emperors built their homes and the Forum was the civic center of ancient Rome. It was kind of overwhelming, as everywhere you looked you were surrounded by Roman ruins.

Our next stop was the Capitoline Hill. We did not approach it by ascending the main stairs, as Michelangelo intended. Sorry buddy, Rome is hilly. We also looked at the monument to Vittorio Emmanuel, the first king of united Italy, and Trajan's Column.

We considered walking to Villa Borghese, a park in northern Rome, for our appointment at the Borghese Gallery (mandatory reservations, you are given a two hour slot and must leave when those two hours are up), but we had done a lot of walking, so we caught a cab. The Borghese Gallery is an art museum in the lavish Borghese family home (the Villa, today a large public park, was their land). The collection highlights are two Bernini sculptures, his David and his Apollo chasing Daphne.

After soaking in the collection, we enjoyed the park before walking to the Trevi area for dinner and gelato.

The next morning I visited Santa Maria della Vittoria, a Baroque church that houses Bernini's Santa Teresa in Ecstasy. To get to the church, I had to walk through the middle of a huge protest. I asked Monica what exactly they were protesting, but it didn't seem to be anything in particular, "There are just so many problems in Italy." And of course that was before the devastating earthquake his L'Aquila. Santa Maria della Vittoria was gorgeous. I really enjoyed the sculpture. It fits so well into its environment. The donor portraits are two theatre boxes on eaither side of Santa Teresa, as though they are watching the scene. A small window above the sculpture lets in sunlight. After contemplating the sculpture for a while I decided to do the offering that illuminates the sculpture, but afterwards I was disappointed because the artificial light just interfered with the effect. I also ducked into Santa Susanna next door, the seat of the American Catholic church in Rome, but it really wasn't anything special.

My first stop with Allison was the Pantheon. It's incredible that it has been preserved so well! After wandering the area, Allison and I tried to find this one café in Rick. Turns out they had just moved. When we finally found it, we were joyously greeted and offered free sexy (strawberry) wine.

We had decided to book a tour of the Vatican to avoid lines and such, especially with Holy Week looming. We were tight on time so hopped in a cab to meet our group. I guess the new thing in tours is that the guide speaks into a little microphone and you all have individual earpieces. The sound quality isn't great but I guess it's nice that you can wander on your own.

Our tour guide informed us that the Vatican is only the second smallest country in the world. The smallest is also in Rome, the "Sovereign Military Order of Malta." Technical, much? I think it's actually up for debate whether the Knights of Malta make up a country.

The Vatican Museum is enormous. I was really excited to see the Laocoön and of course the brilliant frescoes School of Athens and the Sistine Chapel. Our tour guide, Rahul, had studied art history and knew what he was talking about, which was good. Quirks: calling trompe l'oeil "trompe loy" and Raphael "Rafa." I think he was under the impression that I knew a lot more about art history than I actually do. There were some Russians in our group who asked A LOT of questions. They didn't believe in trompe l'oeil.

The Sistine Chapel is, simply put, overwhelming. You don't know where to look first: The Last Judgement, the ceiling, or the other frescoes by other famous artists. No photography is allowed, but of course I saw people sneaking shots. In addition to the potential for damage (people always "forget" to turn off the flash), the real reason is that the Japanese television company that helped finance the restoration now has exclusive rights over the images.

After the Sistine Chapel, we entered St. Peter's Basilica, another overwhelming experience. It's a rather large church, as you might guess. The tour had gone long thanks to the multitude of questions from the Russians, so the group dispersed as they wanted to "watch" Vespers. I don't know how much more we were supposed to be guided through, but I asked him to at least show us Michelangelo's Pietá. The sculpture is so serene. You wouldn't even notice that a deranged person started smashing it with a hammer in the 90s.

I was really excited (I think I may have squealed a little) when I saw the Vatican post office was still open. Sadly I didn't bring anyone's address with me to Italy so only my parents will be receiving postcards from the Vatican.

We wandered along the Tiber to Trastevere, a colorful neighborhood in southern Rome. We ducked inside Santa Maria in Trastevere before the Palm Sunday vigil. Interesting fact: Italian churches, besides Santa Susanna, give out olive branches instead of palm fronds on Palm Sunday. We enjoyed dinner and of course gelato with Rick's suggestions.

The next morning I went to mass at Santa Susanna. I don't know if I was expecting some mythical Roman spirit to reignite my faith, but that didn't happen. Maybe it would have if I had attended mass in Italian. Palm Sunday always goes long (that pesky reading of the passion) and I had a train to catch, so I ducked out before communion.

On the high speed train, it is about an hour and a half from Rome to Florence. I don't understand why Firenze is Florence in English (Florencia en español), as names of other cities, Roma, Venezia, are more similar. We were again staying by the train station, at il Ghiro Guesthouse. I think the employee who checked us in was just the weekend cleaner or something because he didn't want us to pay then, but we insisted because we had the cash ready.

We had a pizza lunch at a place pretty much two doors down recommended by Rick. Florence is tiny (although we never made it across the river) and very easy to navigate.

Our first stop was the Medici Chapel, which has to be the biggest scam in Florence. We did'n't realize that the whole thing is under massive restoration after falling debri in 1999 revealed that it was basically structurally unsound. Still worth a look, but not for 6 euros. We opted against paying to enter San Lorenzo, the church next door. We did enjoy wandering around the San Lorenzo market. You can buy excellent leather goods in Florence. I resisted the handbags but did buy a few bracelets.

We walked by the Duomo, Baptistery and Campanile which was very exciting. We had gelato at Grom, which became an obsession. We soaked in the Piazza della Signoria for a bit before our entry time to the Uffizi Gallery. Reservations were not mandatory and were 4 euros, but the lines are pretty ridiculous. The Uffizi Gallery has an INCREDIBLE collection of Italian paintings. The highlight is considered Botticelli's Birth of Venus (I think I like Spring better though), but the collection traces Italian art from Gothic altarpieces to the high Renaissance to the Baroque. The gallery used to be the offices of the Medici, connecting to Palazzo Vecchio and their Pitti Palace across the Arno River by the Ponte Vecchio. Sounds like a sweet life to me.

We hung out in the Piazza della Signoria and were entertained by a group of students dressed in all black and sporting blackened cardboard organs on their heads. We thought it might be some sort of anti-smoking crusade, but they said it wasn't. We ate at a restaurant Rick recommended. We got there shortly after they opened for dinner which was smart because it filled up fast with Rick's readers and they had to turn people without reservations away. Grom afterwards.

The next morning I visited Santa Maria Novella, the church that gives Florence's main train station its name. I had to go to see Masaccio's Holy Trinity with its perfect geometrical perspective. Other than that, the church wasn't too exciting, pretty austere (I forget which order it was associated with). The walls were mostly bare and whitewashed, which does kind of take away the stunning effect of the Holy Trinity. If the walls were exposed stone, or there were more radiating chapels around the fresco, the effect would be much greater.

I met Allison on the train for a daytrip to Siena. She told me about the devastating earthquake that had struck L'Aquila in the middle of the night. We were too far away to really be directly affected by the earthquake, but all of Italy was obviously very concerned.

Siena once competed with Florence to be Italy's great city, but Florence stepped out as the hotbed of the Renaissance, so Siena has a certain sleepy medieval charm. Rick is obsessed with Siena. Most of the buildings are of the brown color of the earth, you remember from your crayon box: "Burnt Sienna." The Piazza del Campo is one of Rick's favorite squares in Europe, housing the Palazzo Pubblico. We didn't go in to see the frescoed Allegory of Good and Bad Government, for shame.

We grabbed pizza to go and lounged to eat it on the Piazza del Campo, breaking two rules at once there. From there, we went to the Duomo and purchased our "My Name is Duccio" passes. The exterior of the Duomo is similar to the marble encrustation on the Florence Duomo, but the interiors are quite different. The Siena Duomo has huge green and white striped marble columns that give you the impression that you are in a forest. We went to the Duomo Museum, which has a lookout tower gives you a great view of the city. We stopped in the Baptistery too. In terms of the Duomo, you can see Siena's unfulfilled ambitions: you see a random fragment of the wall in what today is the parking lot that was originally supposed to be part of the cathedral.

We stopped briefly in St. Catherine's Sanctuary and the San Domenico church that houses her blackened thumb and her head (thankfully covered with some sort of wax) before making our way to the train station and back to Florence.

We had dinner at Acqua al 2, home of the mythical "blueberry steak" that we had heard about. On the way, we bumped into three guys from the Georgetown in Madrid program. The restaurant was FULL of Americans. I'm not much of a steak person, but I'd literally heard that it was life-changing so I ordered it. I guess it was good?

The next morning I climbed up the Duomo's dome as soon as it opened, bumping into someone from my freshman floor studying in Copenhagen visiting a friend studying at the Georgetown Villa outside of Florence. Unfortunately it was overcast while I was up there, but it was still cool.

My next stop was Santa Croce church, final resting place of Dante, Galileo, Michelangelo and Machiavelli, though his tomb was obscured by scaffolding. I met Allison in front of Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise on the Baptistery. We went to the Bargello, a gallery whose highlights are Donatello's bronze David and the original panels of the Sacrifice of Isaac by Ghiberti and Brunelleschi as part of the contest to see who would make the Baptistery doors. We had lunch with Rick and poked our head in the Palazzo Vecchio, which Rick advised was free. At lunch I realized I had forgotten to put on sunscreen that morning.

We went into the Duomo, which is free. The interior is not very elaborate. I went in to the Baptistery, feeling obligated after Page's class, but Allison decided that she could see enough from the outside and didn't need to pay 4 euros. We went to the Duomo Museum, and Allison climbed Giotto's Tower (Campanile) because the line for the dome was ridiculous.

We then went to our reservation at the Accademia. I have mixed feelings about the Accademia. Yes, seeing David was incredible. Yes, Michelangelo's slaves were a treat. But other than that, there was the plaster mold of the Rape of the Sabine Women, a few middling paintings, a random collection of musical instruments, and former art students' final exams. Of course you have to go to the Accademia to see Michelangelo's David, but the ticket and reservation price was the same as the Uffizi, which makes no sense as the Uffizi Gallery is all-around excellent.

We had dinner with Rick, and I had ravioli in a very tasty walnut sauce. The next morning we checked out and headed to the train station. Allison had left her Botticelli poster behind at the hostel, and the staffer came running to the platform to give it to her, which was really pretty touching.

From Florence to Venice it was two and a half hours. It's hard to describe Venice, as it's so different from other places. You walk out of the train station to catch the Vaporetto, the "water bus" and the only form of public transportation. Your other options are walking, water taxi, and gondola.

Venice doesn't use street addresses, it's divided into sections which have addresses that go from 1 to 6000. For tourists, there are usually signs pointing the way to the nearest landmark such as San Marco or the Rialto bridge. Thankfully I got very specific directions on how to find our B&B, Ca' dei Fuseri. It was nice, though we never really saw the staff between checking in and checking out.

We cut to the chase and headed to St. Mark's first. The square is very unique, full of tourists and pigeons. There are also the uber-expensive cafes that hit you with unbelievable cover charges for the live orchestras. Rick had a nice audioguide of the square that was a good introduction to Venice. You feel yourself relaxing as you just sit and watch the water. Then a pigeon walked right over my foot - they have no fear apparently.

We went into St. Mark's Basilica, which is fascinating. I wish you could take photos inside. Venice was once considered part of the "eastern world" so the basilica is a Greek cross and covered with Byzantine style mosaics on the inside.

We wandered the charming streets of Venice, stopping in shops to enjoy the Murano glass. I'm pretty sure that except for the pricy stuff it's all made in China though. At quarter to six, we decided to take the elevator to the top of the Campanile. We figured it was the perfect time because Venice would be bathed in late afternoon light and then the bells would chime at the top of the hour. The light wasn't as perfect as I imagined, and the bells let us down. Nothing happened. The next day while touring the Doge's Palace, we heard and SAW the bells ringing at the top of the hour.

We didn't have very good luck with dinner that night. We decided to try Rick's suggestion for a pub crawl and try cichetti, the Venetian version of tapas, but it didn't work out quite like we imagined. When we decided to just have a regular dinner, all of Rick's recommendations were full or closed. We basically went into the first place we saw. They gave us an English menu, but left one phrase in Italian that said everything with an asterisk was frozen and reheated. There was an asterisk next to every pasta, pizza, etc. Only the appetizers, salads and bruschetta were made fresh to order. I just had a bruschetta. We were next to two English speakers, a British woman who lives in Venice and an Italian woman who lives in New York. The British woman seemed to really like the restaurant and they special ordered an antipasto plate. We were going to ask to change our order but just then our food arrived.

We enjoyed a gelato on the Rialto bridge and were headed back to the B&B when a gondolier stopped us. We said no, too expensive. He showed us that the normal rate in the evening was 100 euros but that he could take us for 60. We said 50 and walked away, assuming he wouldn't take the offer. But a minute later he chased us down and said that he could take us for 50. 25 euros each really wasn't bad. The gondola ride was very peaceful, down empty back canals. Venice as a city shuts down for the evening pretty early. As we approached the Rialto bridge again, a bunch of people snapped our picture and we heard someone exclaim, "They're SO YOUNG!"

The next morning we went to the Correr Museum to buy our tickets to the Doge's Palace. As a Rick reader in the know, you really do have to laugh at the people in the long line, since to enter the Doge's Palace you have to buy the San Marco Museum Plus Pass that covers the Correr Museum right across the square. I don't think Allison was too impressed with the Palace.

From there, we caught a Vaporetto the the island of Murano. Our first order of business was lunch. Somehow we wandered in the opposite direction of the main drag of Murano and ended up in a seemingly deserted part of the island. We saw a multilingual sign for a restaurant and followed it. We got a very authentic Murano experience: we were the only females in the restaurant besides the waitstaff. Our fellow diners seemed to be mostly construction workers. In contrast to the normal scenario, the restaurant had two mens rooms and only one womens bathroom.

We made our way to the main canal and looked into the shops. They all pretty much seemed to have the same stuff. We wanted to see a demonstration. At one place you had to pay to see it, and we didn't want to do that. We found a place with free demonstrations, but the demonstration wasn't very good. Three people were working on glass, and the guy who was supposed to explain what was going on seemed more interested in personal details about me and Allison than actually explaining. He also maybe should have befriended the people more likely to actually buy stuff. We both left Murano empty handed. I feel bad because I'm sure my mom would have really liked a little figurine or something but I just didn't see the perfect thing. There was also the tricky issue of getting the glass to the U.S. in one piece.

We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering the streets of Venice. We took one last suggestion from Rick for dinner. Afterwards, we decided to find the Grom, which apparently is a gelato chain with two locations in New York. Streets in Venice are more like little alleys, so getting there was like orienteering. We found it though with little problems, and the night was gorgeous and foggy. On the way home, after doing pretty well finding Grom, I started taking us in the opposite direction, taking us towards the sea instead of the Grand Canal. But we made it.

We had wanted to get our breakfast a little earlier on Friday since we had to leave for the airport and ask how exactly to get there, but no one was around. We left a note, but it was still there in the morning so we called the B&B owner. He told us he was on his way. He didn't seem that familiar with the Alilaguna boats to the airport, which was surprising since you would think that lots of guests would have similar questions. He looked it up for us and we made it to the airport, after a probably more than hour-long boat ride. The Venice airport is pretty small. We made it back to Madrid, and here I am.

Trevi Fountain: