Many Mountains and Rocks

After our long weekend in Rome, we had two days of class and another three day weekend. (Because Janet is amazing and understands that there are things to see and do in Italy aside from writing papers and reading books.) Neil, Will and I had originally planned to go back to Rome and see what we missed, but our mishaps with the trains made us wary, plus we didn't want to spend too much money. So we decided to go to Cinque Terre, because a few of our friends had gone a few weeks before and thought it was the most amazing place on earth. We weren't excited about the weather forecast, but a little rain wasn't going to stop us.

So we took an Intercity train to Pisa, then transferred to a slower regional line that took us to Corniglia (pronounced core-NEE-lee-a). It is the middle of the five cities (because 'cinque terre' literally translates to 'five lands'), and probably the best place to stay on just an overnight visit because the first day you can hike up to the northern-most city, then hike to the southern cities on the second day. So when we got off the train, we started walking towards the town. We knew to expect stairs because it was so hilly, but what greeted us was a climb of 398 terra cotta steps. That's something like 33 flights. That was fun! And we got to the top and saw nothing but a road and a little shack, so we picked a direction and started walking. It was Friday afternoon, but it seemed like no one was around. Our friends who had been there before us had said that we should look out for a little old lady hanging out of a window who would give us a good room for a good price. Unfortunately, we didn't see her, so we wandered until we found a place with a big sign that said 'camere' ('rooms'). They charged something pretty reasonable (I think it came to about 28 Euro per person for a three person room). There was a restaurant attached, so we figured we had dinner planned as well.

I don't have a picture of our room, but there was a really nice little courtyard attached to it.


This is the view from our hotel room. It would have been really nice on a sunny day, but that wasn't our luck. There were a lot of vineyards on the hills, which is what you see here (and the sea behind it!).


We set off towards Monterosso, the northern-most city, with the understanding that it was the hardest climb, so we'd get it over with. The paths towards Vernazza was paved pretty well at first with cobblestones, but it was soon to change.


The path started to ascend very quickly, which didn't really surprise me. What was shocking was the never-ceasing ascent. It was very tiring, to say the least.


One nice thing about all those stairs, though, is that they afforded a great view.


Pretty soon the path started to take on a bit more 'personality.' We said goodbye to cobblestones pretty quickly and got used to what were probably the original paths between these towns before the paved roads connecting them today.


As we approached Vernazza, the town between Corniglia and Monterosso, we suddenly started going down! It irked me a bit after having gone up that whole way, but whatever, it was still beautiful.


As we came around the edge of a cliff, we suddenly saw Vernazza, which is a surprisingly pink and lovely village right on the coast.


It took a long descent to finally get into the village. Part of the problem is that while I was taking photographs, I got stuck behind this guy with this stair-climbing motorized wheelbarrow thing that was going really slowly. My irritation was softened, though, by my amazement that such things exist.


And this was an adorable dog that greeted us. I didn't take any pictures of the thousands of cats that inhabit this town, because they were pretty disgusting, for the most part.


We rested for a while in the town because the stairs wore our legs to jelly. Neil and Will eyed a gelato shop, but I went and got a big fluffy piece of focaccia bread at a bakery next door. It was amazing. When Neil and Will came out of the gelato stand, they looked at my bread and their faces fell. So when they were done with their ice cream, they went and got foccaccia.

And hey! More stairs!


I decided that Vernazza is most beautiful upon exiting, at least after taking this picture.


By this photograph and the one before it, you can see that we had to climb more stairs. I grumbled a lot about how we had to go down all those stairs just to have to go back up, but my grumbling was mostly stifled by my panting. It was rough.


The path got nastier. At some points, it was only wide enough for our feet, and the stairs were more like jagged pieces of rock in a semi-random order. But the meanness of the path was seriously outweighed by how beautiful it was most of the time.


After another hour and a half of hiking (not represented with photos because I spent most of my time trying to keep up with two boys without cameras only intent on their destination), we reached Monterosso (literally meaning 'red mountain,' though it wasn't very red when we were there). Here's our first glimpse of it, just as the path turned back to normal.


We were really tired, so we just tried to find some place to sit down, but it had rained a bit while we were up in the mountains, so everything was wet. Instead we decided just to keep moving and wandered around the town exploring for a while. We found this gun turret on the sea that we figured was from World War Two. It was creepily unmarked and just hanging out by the virtual aquarium just up the path.


We also made friends with this huge frog. Neil and Will were more grossed out by it than I was. We probably blinded the poor thing with all the flash photos we took of it, though.


We had arrived around six, so it took us about three and a half hours to get from Corniglia. We stayed in Monterosso until the sun set and decided to take the train home and get dinner at our hotel.


We had spaghetti with pesto sauce for dinner, since pesto was developed in this little corner of the world. It was really amazing. Then we went to our hotel room, watched some trash Italian TV and eventually hit the hay.

We got up the next morning and had cookies and popcorn for breakfast, since that's what I brought as snacks. The hike to Manarola and Riomaggiore, the southern two towns, was supposed to be really easy, so we took our time getting ready. We checked out and set off with our bags back down the stairs. Here's a bit of an idea what they looked like:


The sun still wasn't out, but it was a windier day, which meant more waves. And because we were hiking closer to the water, it made for a really entertaining walk.


Our path was really nice and wide. Aside from the occasional huge puddle, it was a walk in the park compared to the day before. And no, the stairs into the ocean were not part of our journey.


This is the little bit of land that Corniglia sits on. You can see a few buildings dotting the top, but the town faces the other direction for the most part. (And look! Our path even had a railing!)


It only took about 45 minutes to get to Manarola. It was a really small town compared to all the other ones. We stopped for lunch at this little picnic area and ate Nutella sandwiches that were left over from our trip to Pompeii.


The path to Riomaggiore was even nicer than the one to Manarola. It was paved for the most part, and there were little benches along the way. Unfortunately that meant that the path was more crowded, but that didn't really make a difference. It's a good place for graffitists too, apparently.


All the turns in the path were named. This one is my favorite, for obvious reasons.


I'll never understand this business about stairs into the ocean. There would be absolutely not way of docking a boat here and getting in safely...


We decided that this was originally a pirate hang-out, because of little caves like this.


In Riomaggiore, we sat in a cafe that in America would have had a nautical theme, but in Cinque Terre, I think it was just genuine decor; met a dog named Bingy; ate fresh fried calamari; then caught a train back to Pisa and eventually made it back to Florence Saturday night. We were wiped out.

One Day in Pompeii

So we stayed overnight in Rome in a hostel, and it was great, like I said. But we had made arrangements for the next day to wake up at three in the morning, check out, and then take a five AM train to Naples, then connect to Pompeii. We all knew that wasn't going to happen, especially when we found out the early train left from another train station--not the one four blocks from our hostel. So we spent about two hours on Monday trying to get a different train. After trudging from bus station to tourist info to Eurostar info, we finally found that our tickets worked with an eight AM train. So we woke at seven, checked out, grabbed some snacks and went to the station. The train ride to Naples was unspectacular. (Though we went through a lot of tunnels, and at one point the lights in the train went out while we were in one, and we couldn't see our hands in front of our faces.) When we reached the suburbs, we got to see the awful trash situation that's going on there. But we didn't see much of the city proper--just the train station, really. We were directed from place to place, trying to look for the train to Pompeii (there was fabled to be one that left ever half hour). We tramped to one end of the train station with all our bags, only to discover that our tickets didn't work with that train. So we went back to tourist info, which misdirected us in the first place. He had nothing else to offer, so Eurostar info came to our rescue once more, and we found our train. 45 minutes later, we were in Pompeii. And a short walk later, we were at the ruins. We were able to leave our luggage at the ticket office, so it was really nice to just wander around at our own pace.

The first few streets are pretty unspectacular looking, especially when the sky is grey. But the weather cleared up throughout our day. We just hung out for the most part and wandered through the ruins. I'm sure we didn't see anything because we only had four hours there until they closed, but we saw enough.

They've done a nice job of cleaning everything up so that the city looks the closest to livable as possible. A lot of the frescoes are covered with plastic so they last, and you're allowed to walk through a lot of the houses. It was really great!


I don't want to sound like a photo nerd, but the quality of light in these houses was really awesome. It was so soft and made everything look really blue and beautiful.


This was what I took to be a palace, or at least the home of a much wealthier person, because it was much bigger and had more elaborate paintings as well as a courtyard.


This is a shot through a big loggia at the ampitheater. We didn't go in, but we looked at it and posed for goofy photos in front of it.


There were all these really friendly dogs just wandering around the city. I think that there is a restaurant that feeds them scraps, so they're not hungry and they don't beg--they'll let you pet them. Neil made friends with a few of them. (And this one's just sleeping.)


I think that these counters indicate either kitchens or restaurants--I'm not sure. They were always in the front of buildings, so that makes me think that they're places where people could walk in and buy food or something. They didn't have any signs up, so it's still a mystery to me.


Here's one of the temples in the forum. The bricks are used to reconstruct the columns where the original pieces of marble are missing. They make for a very strange look...


I thought this room was particularly lovely.


And here you can see Mt. Visuvius just faintly through the haze.


And that was about it for Pompeii! (There are a few more pictures, but since I posted so many of Rome, I don't want to take up too much bandwidth.) We got the train back to Naples, no problem, and then went back to Rome and transferred to Florence. It was a very long day, but really fun. Needless to say, we were exhausted the next day in class, but I think it was worth it.

Anyway, here's a view of the sea from the train on our way back to Naples. I finally got to see it!

Three days in Rome, over 90 pictures--and those are just my edited selections!

Well, it’s been quite a while since I’ve updated. There are a few reasons for that, but I’ll just go ahead and blame laziness. I’ve since been to Rome and Venice, and I’m currently in London. So let’s get started! I’ll try to recall as much as I can, but maybe my pictures will have to speak for me.

On Saturday morning, we left really early on the Eurostar that took us directly to Rome. A group of four of us played cards to pass the time, though the ride only lasted two hours. The fog was so thick through the windows that we only caught glimpses of the changing landscape. When we arrived in the city, the clouds had lifted and we took the bus to our amazingly chic three-star hotel, Il Smeraldo. Aside from the tram that nearly ran me over, I really didn’t notice any differences between Rome and Florence at first, but as we set off to the Roman Forum (which was only a couple blocks from our hotel) I was struck by how much busier and urban Rome feels. For one thing, the streets are much wider and the busier ones are paved (in Florence almost all the streets, excepting some of the busier streets around the edges of the city, are the original style of cobblestones). But the Roman drivers at least stop for pedestrians.


After we dropped off our bags, our first stop was Capitoline Hill, which predates Michelangelo, but it was Michelangelo who made it looks as it does today. Here are the stairs leading up to it and the main building. You can also see the two statues that stand at the top of the stairs. If I remember correctly, I think they're two brothers from Troy. Anyway, they're hilariously out of proportion with the horses next to them.


This building was already standing when Michelangelo took on the project, so he redid the facade and built an identical one across from it so the square would be symmetrical. We didn't have time to go into this museum, which was too bad because there are some really famous works in there. Next time, I guess.

This is actually a Roman statue that used to be somewhere else in the City, but Michelangelo moved it so there would be something to look at in the square without him having to make anything. It's Hadrian, by the way.


The Roman Forum is right behind Capitoline Hill, so we went there next. Since we didn't study anything about ancient Rome, I don't know much about any of these buildings. But they're cool to look at! As you can see, it's pretty hazy in Rome, and the fact that the sun was beating down through it didn't help my photos much.



This is a panorama of the Forum of Augustus. In the foreground were ruins of ancient houses. The walls are still half-standing, and some of the original tile still exists.


Just across the way from the Forum of Augustus is the Forum of Trajan, complete with the Column of Trajan. The second picture has some cars for scale (because I totally wanted them to be in the shot).


This is a temple that was converted into a Christian church, which accounts for its good condition. We didn't go inside, but I contented myself with seeing this little old lady reading a newspaper on the ruins outside.


This is a picture that really isn't a representative as it should be, but what I was meaning to capture was the two trees and grape vine there. Apparently back in ancient Roman times there was an ancient olive tree, a fig tree and grape vine on that site that was supposed to bring good luck. I'm going to go ahead and assume that these trees are not the same ones as back then, but it would be pretty sweet if they were...


This is a column that I liked because it has a bunch of bullet holes in it. Napoleon's soldiers probably used it for target practice. Who knows? It's just easiest to blame everything on Napoleon.


This is the Basilica of Constantine. It's HUGE. But broken down. They didn't convert this one into a church, I guess. (But keep it in mind for another church I visit later in the weekend!)


This is a little ruined temple that we didn't talk much about. All I know is that half of it is actually reconstructed to allow people to see what it might have looked like. I guess the curators of the site decided that there are enough bits of rubble lying around.


This is the Arch of Titus. Don't ask me why all the names of these things are the Blankety-blank of Blahbetty-boo. I guess since everybody's name ends in -us, it's too hard to add an apostrophe 's' onto that.


Then it was off to the Colosseum. It's right behind the forum, so it wasn't too bad of a walk. There was a huge line, but Janet, using her awesome tour-guide might, cut to the front of the line and got us in as a group, but then snuck out and got a cappuccino.


This was the sign hanging that the people in line were supposed to read. I'd make fun of the bad translation, but I probably wouldn't do any better translating into Italian...


Here you can see the line we cut to the front of a little better.


And here's the interior! There really isn't much to see, though there is a little tiny bit of recosntruction in the left side of the picture sort of in the middle there. There's part of the floor over the stalls underneath and some reconstructed seats.



After the Colosseum, we were on our own for lunch. We went back to our hotel and discovered a pizza place. None of us really were that crazy about Florentine pizza (which is round, thin crust, but a little bit soggy), so we wanted to try Roman style pizza. Let me just tell you now: it's amazing. First of all, it's rectangular and much longer than it is wide. Plus they put crazy stuff on it like potatoes. And at the place we went to, they hack you pieces and sell it by weight. We ended up calling the place "machete pizza" because I believe they literally use a machete to cut the pizza apart. We were all afraid we'd get a finger in our lunch, but they're pros.

So after lunch, we went on another tour of Rome, this time focusing on Renaissance churches. We didn't get to go in St. Ivo (which was designed by Borromini, one of my favorite Baroque architects), but we did catch a glimpse of its distinctive spire!


Even though Rome is a huge city, everything seems really close together. And by 'everything,' I mean everything famous. Like the Pantheon, which is just around the corner from St. Ivo.


Our guide told us that it was impossible to capture the grandeur and beauty of the Pantheon. And yeah, it's incredible. It was full of people, but it still felt like there was a TON of room, because there was--it was just overhead. Well, anyway, I figured I might as well try to capture its hugeness while I was there. The auto-merge function in Photoshop didn't work, so I had to do this one by hand. It's not perfect, but maybe you get the idea.


Then it was across the street (again) to a Franciscan church that was redone by Bernini. He designed the little elephant with the obelisk on its back. I think this is the source for modern Hummels. But seriously, it's pretty ridiculous looking.


The interior is actually pretty Gothic looking, so I think Bernini didn't really change much.


But he did make this magnificent tomb for somebody. Yeah, that's marble.


Then we went to a church that was later Baroque. I don't remember the name of it (they seriously all start to blend together after a while). But it had these awesome frescoes on the ceiling done in perspective. The dome you see in the back is not actually a dome, but painted to look like one. The figures (if you can see them, it's a little blurry, sorry) are supposed to represent the four (yes, four) continents of the world--Europe, America, Asia, Africa. My favorite is Asia because the camel looks so friendly!


Then we saw Hadrian's Column, which is pretty much a rip off of the Column of Trajan, but at least it's not standing in a pile of ruins. This is in the middle of a bustling piazza.


After seeing Hadrian's column, Janet took us out for gelato at this really amazing gelateria. And it was there that I discovered the master combination of gelato flavors--cioccoloate fondente, pistaccio & nocciola (hazelnut). Needless to say, it was amazing. Then Janet took us to Bernini's fountain, which was naturally under construction, so I have no pictures of it. But after the fountain, we went to a church with a whole chapel filled with Caravaggios. Here is one of my favorites! Unfortunately, the rest of the entire population of tourists in Rome decided to go look at the Caravaggios at the same time, so I was elbowed pretty much the entire time we were looking at them, and eventually got knocked out of the way by some really rude French people. But at least we got to see them, if not for very long.


Since we were on our own for dinner that night, Johanna, Neil, Will and I went out for salads at a place called La Ensalata Ricca ("the rich salad"). I had a pretty good salad with buffalo mozzarella in it (called "la buffala"), but there was too much corn in it. I know some people will understand my aversion to corn in things. After dinner, we watched a movie in our hotel room with a bunch of people, told some ghost stories, then finally went to bed.

The next day we set off very early in the morning to the Vatican to wait in line for three hours to get in to the museum. It was free day, go figure. So this line, which was about eight people wide and probably two miles long, moved like a sleepy snake along the street, and all these pushy old people kept weaseling their way in front of us, which was really irritating because we, the tourists, were being mature and patient, and these Italians were pushing and shoving their way to one of the holiest places on earth. What can you do? Anyway, once we got inside, we had the whole museum pretty much to ourselves, because apparently nobody wants to see the Raphaels or Caravaggios or Titians and want to get straight to the Sistine Chapel. Anyway, here is a view of St. Peter's from the Vatican's back yard. It was very sunny that morning, so apparently that means that the sky is white. We were hurried.


The first part of the museum was Renaissance paintings, so we got to see Raphael's Ascension of the Virgin, Caravaggio's Deposition from the Cross, and naturally a ton of other really famous works. Then we walked through this big courtyard and entered the Roman collection. There was so much stuff that it's crammed onto shelves and into little niches. There is a hall full of heads:


And this was a little room full of sculptures of animals of all kinds.


And hey, look! It's the Scraper! (A famous Roman copy of a Greek bronze.)


And this is a Roman sculpture discovered in the Renaissance that influenced a lot of artists of the time. Michelangelo was really into the big torsos... now I guess we know why.


Then we continued down the packed corridors (I mean REALLY annoyingly packed) to get to the Sistine Chapel. Since that's where everyone really wanted to go, nobody really wanted to stop and see the artwork, so when you saw something that you liked or recognized, it was pretty much impossible to actually stop and look at it because you'd just get carried on with the flow. But this was my favorite corridor. It's the hall of maps, which shows maps of all the territories governed by the Vatican in the 1500's. Florence was included!


And hey, look, it's everybody's favorite Roman copy, Laocoon! (The original!)


Just before we went into the Sistine Chapel we took a detour to all the rooms with Raphael's frescoes, including the 'School of Athens.'


Because it was Sunday and Free Day, the Sistine Chapel was closing early. So we had to pretty much run through the rest of the museum to the chapel. And we were seriously some of the last people allowed in. I'll say now that although the Sistine Chapel is one of the most amazing rooms in existence, the experience was pretty awful. The guards shove you down these little stairs into a huge sea of people, all with their hands raised like submarine periscopes with cameras on the end. And there's really nowhere to stand, because everybody is shoving towards the exit. Then, after not having been there for even three minutes, they closed the chapel and forced everybody out. We sifted ourselves to the edge of the crowd so that we could be some of the last people to leave. But we really didn't get to enjoy it. I can't even imagine it in the summer, because it was so hot in February. I wouldn't repeat it, probably.


Because we waited in line for three hours, we at least didn't have to wait in line to go into St. Peter's proper. And St. Peter's is probably my favorite place in Rome. It was so beautiful. I can't even describe it.


We were in there for about an hour or so and got to see a procession for mass. Apparently the pope was there the day before us. But I'm glad he wasn't there the day we visited because it would have been even more crowded. So anyway, here's the piazza.


And the Swiss Guard!


We had that afternoon free, but we were so tired that we just went back to our hotel room. Then Will, Neil, Jen and I walked around for a few hours, found some playground equipment, then eventually went to a restaurant and got a pretty weird meal. It was ok.

The next day was an action-packed church-filled tour of Rome, starting with the church with Bernini's Ecstasy of St. Theresa. It was really cool to see that work in context, since I've studied it so many times.


Then it was just down the street (again) to a fountain designed by Giambologna and a Roman bath-turned-Christian church, designed by Michelangelo.


The basilica was just ridiculously enormous. If you remember the Basilica of Constantine, this church is pretty much what it would have looked like in Roman times, minus, of course, Michelangelo's Renaissance updates.


At one end of the basilica, there is this big calendar on the floor that a little beam of sunlight moves along throughout the year. The signs of the zodiac are all along the long line, and where the sun is tells you what time of year it is.


On the right hand side above the pediment, you can see where the little beam of sunlight comes through.


And here's the sign for Pisces!


After this church, we went to see Borromini's wonderful little church, San Carlino. It's very simple, but mathematically complex. It's one of my favorite churches. This is the little courtyard next to the chapel.


And the interior...


And the exterior...


Then, just next to San Carlino is yet another church by Bernini (which was probably a slap in the face to Borromini, since they were such staunch rivals in their lifetime). I forget the name of this church, too. Sorry.


And that was it for our time with Janet, so we were on our own until class on Wednesday. It was only Monday, and we wanted to go to Pompeii. (More on that later.) So we spent our time wandering around Rome the rest of that afternoon. We found the Spanish Steps, though the dreary weather coupled with the obelisk at the top being under construction didn't make them much to look at.


We also came across this piazza with identical churches! Apparently one was built earlier, and they liked it so much, they built another one. (I seriously have no idea why.)


In the middle of the piazza was this statue and a very clever cat.


Then we climbed up this big hill that overlooked the piazza, and I got a smoggy panorama of the city.


We walked around a bit more, found the Ara Pacis Augustae (though it was closed) and Augustus Caesar's tomb. But our final stop for the day was Santa Maria Maggiore. This is probably in my top-five list of churches.


This is an elaborate side chapel:


Bernini's tomb!


Yet another very elaborate side chapel:


We went back to our hotel, grabbed our bags, then took the bus to our hostel, 'The Yellow,' where we spent a fun evening. Luckily they had rooms for six people, and there were six of us, so we didn't have to sleep with strangers. (Well, it almost didn't work out, but I'll just say that thanks to the kindness of some of my friends, I didn't have to sleep with strangers.)

So that's it for Rome! I hope that will tide you over. I'll get started on Pompeii ASAP!