i see danger

In addition to all my Italian language learning, I have also picked up a few handy signs and gestures for getting by in the world. For example, and I have demonstrated for your education as well, the army sign for "I see" is fingers pointing to one's eyes, and the sign for "danger" a downward slashing motion. This comes in handy when you are leading infantry over a hill and you see the enemy approaching, or you are about to pass men who think it's fine to clap at you or suck their teeth at you, or if you see a really good gelato place. Or if you plan to sleep on the ground outside of Rome's central train station.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Heidi's original schedule called for her to get into Rome early in the morning and then catch a train to meet us in Florence. But stupid American Airlines canceled her flight and put her on a much later one that would get her into Rome fairly late the next night. So, since we had received an invitation from th ex-spies to come down to Rome, Brie and I decided to go down there, hang out with them in Rome, and ride a late night train back to Florence with Heidi, so she wouldn't be dealing with that stuff alone late at night. Yvette stayed in Florence since she was kind of tired of us anyway.

The time in Rome was fun. I finally made it to the Colosseum (photo courtesy of Coma's camera with a polarizing filter), after three trips with Yvette where I only looked at the outside, as well as Palatine Hill and the Roman Forum. But I didn't have the good book with me, and basically my sightseeing is useless without the good book. It was interesting to look at cool ruins but we didn't really know what we were looking at. After that we did a lot of walking around. Brie and I took them for lunch at our favorite place, which we call Santa Monica Pier, but which is really called Cafe Strega, or Witch Cafe, don't ask me why. I only know this because of reading Harry Potter.

When it was close to time for Heidi's train, we went to a gelato place near the Termini Station. Places near Termini station are not really the nicest places to eat. This one was interesting because we were drinking rancid wine (Brie and I were not drinking it, they were drinking it, maybe the Army makes you immune to it) and then an African man came up to us to sell belts, and Coma offered him some of the wine, which upset the gelateria owner, who started yelling at him, and then he started screaming back that we had given him the wine, and then everybody was yelling at everybody. So basically we started a riot.

Then we moved inside the Station to wait for a while, and finally I got a call from Heidi, and I checked the times to make sure we were still with the trains, and it seemed that we were. So then she got there, all safe and blonde, and we bought our tickets to Florence. And then as I was looking for the train number on the track schedule, I realized that I had somehow managed to buy tickets from a different Rome station to Florence, and that there was no way that we had enough time to get to Rome Tiburtina in time to catch the train.

But we looked on the schedule and there was a midnight train to Florence, so we decided to just take that and plead ignorance if the conductor checked. So we got on that train, said good-bye to the ex-spies again, and waited to leave. One of the ex-spies gestured through the window, very animatedly and specifically, that they were going to wait for the train to leave, but they didn't. And I know they didn't because we just sat there. For about twenty minutes, with nothing happening. And then I got off the train to check the track number and they turned off the lights inside the train. Because that train wasn't leaving for Florence, it was arriving from Florence. But I would like to point out that everyone looked at the board and we all thought it was leaving for Florence.

So then we got off the train. (In retrospect, maybe we should have just hid on it and waited until morning.) No ex-spies, no trains to Florence, nowhere to stay. I talked to a taxi driver about cab fare to Florence (just on the off chance that it wouldn't be hundreds of euros, which of course it was) and he said there was a train to Florence, still that night, from Tiburtina, and I said there wasn't and he said there was, and we got into a whole thing about it, (in Italian, which was by far my best example of speaking Italian this entire trip, it was like being stuck in Rome in the middle of the night woke my brain up, I think for a while there Heidi thought I could actually speak Italian) and finally he said if there's not a train to Florence that night we didn't have to pay for the fare to Tiburtina station. No treno, no paga.

So we went to Tiburtina station, in this unlicensed cab (I could feel the spirit of Yvette cringing), and when we get there the guy goes into the station with me, while Brie and Heidi stayed in the cab with the doors locked, which I'm sure they just loved. And we're looking at the schedule together, me and the unlicensed cabbie, still arguing, because THERE IS NO TRAIN TO FLORENCE. And he's trying to tell me that I should take the train to Milan because he's sure, he's just sure, that it stops in Florence, even though Florence is not listed as one of the stops.

So then I really don't know what to do, so I have him take us to the hotel where the ex-spies were staying so we could see if they have another room. Which they didn't, apparently, even though it was like, a Monday night and I didn't see anyone within miles of it. And the ex-spies weren't there. So I asked to use the internet, which I know they have because I'm looking at it behind the guy, and he won't let me use it, even though it's just a pay internet computer for guests. I almost killed him, but instead I let him live and left a note for the guys.

Heidi, by this time, is over it, in Heidispeak, and doesn't want to get a hotel room, but wants to walk across Rome with her duffel bag and camp out at the station until it's time to catch the first train. And, even though Heidi has never been to Rome before, and she hasn't really slept in five days, I say, yes, let's walk across Rome in the middle of the night and hang out at Termini, adjacent from Rape Alley, that sounds good to me.

Somewhere near the beginning of our trip we stopped at an arcade to use their bathroom. Brie and I went down to the basement, into this weird empty blue room that looked wet but wasn't, to find the bathroom, and Heidi stayed upstairs, where apparently the arcade clerk guy and some other guy got into a fistfight.

While we were in the basement, Coma, who had gotten my note from the clerk, called (surprisingly, since I think I may have called the clerk something not nice in Italian) and said they would meet us. So they did, us dragging Heidi's busting-open duffel bag along. And we took a taxi to the station, Steve McCann following in another cab since the driver wouldn't take five.

And so we get there... and the station is closed. Until morning. It's probably, I don't know, 1 at this point? I asked our cabbie if there was somewhere nearby that was open all night, and he said he thought there was a place on Cavour, so we walked to Cavour, and wandered around and didn't find anywhere, and finally we saw a "Pizza Kebab" place that was still open, and so we went in there and tried to thaw out. We all bought pizza (no kebabs unfortunately) and then the guy gave us all free baklava. Then he was closing, so I asked him if he knew somewhere that was open all night, and he said something like, he would normally close now but he would stay open. And then we waited for a while, maybe 45 minutes, and he was really just going to stay up all night with us, but then after a while we felt bad and said we would go, so he could close up, and he closed up as soon as we left. I was really kind of touched.

Then we were just really out of options. So we went and sat outside Termini. And I was so glad we had the ex-spies with us, because that is not a cool place to hang out. And we were freezing. This is a picture of me and Heidi huddling for warmth.

Finally at about 4:30 they opened the station so we could at least sit on the floor inside, and then we said good-bye to Coma and Steve McCann for the third time, and left for Florence at about 6:30. Without getting murdered or freezing to death or anything.

they got soul but they're not soldiers, or: how we visited florence and didn't see the david

I'm taking some time to catch up a bit on here as Brie proofreads my 30-page arbitration statement that I could not be more sick of. (If she were proofing this I would change it to, 'of which I could not be more sick.') Hopefully they'll think this first draft is outstanding and I will spend no more of my time in Italy working. I will spend it blogging, instead.

We arrived in Florence fairly late in the evening. I had reserved a room in an apartment by email earlier that week, and I called
to say we were going to be late. The woman who answered, Marcella, spoke only Italian, with a little smattering of English, and didn't have my reservation. So that was a fun little test of my Italian. We got it worked out (she said, "oh, Rick Steves!" at one point) and we arrived around nine. The room was nice, a little suite. It had been her daughter's room. After a little while Marcella came in with the phone. She was talking to an American who she couldn't understand and wanted me to translate for her. So that was interesting. Her Italianglish was really cute, but I don't know if I can get across how she talked without being there to imitate her. She kept asking me if I had called my mamma.

Brie and I went for a walk that night but didn't find much since we didn't take a map and didn't really know where we were going. The next day, we decided to take it a little easy, especially considering we had so long in Florence, and just relax and take care of some things. We bought food at the Central Market, where I was rudely clapped at, and then we went to do some laundry. We walked to the laundromat in the neighbhorhood, and then Brie and I went to get some coffee. There were three guys and an older man already in the cafe, who apparently were interested in the fact that Brie couldn't tell what the white substance (shown in the picture at left) was, and I had to taste it before she would put it in her coffee. We have since put "indentifying condiments" on her list of bottom five skills. If you're playing along at home, the answer was... sugar. Sugar, folks.

Brie, utilizing her effortless ability to attract older Italian men, eventually lured the man over. It was his birthday, he told us. This is his line with women. Would we come over and join him? He took Brie's hand so she couldn't really say no. We had been trying to figure out if the guys with him were Italian or not (they looked American but then one of them started speaking perfect Italian to Antonio) and so we had that answered. They were American, but one of them, Dexter, had been living in Italy off and on for years. We talked to them for a while, and after Antonio asked Brie why she was wearing snow boots and asked me why I was covering myself up with a scarf, we decided to rejoin Yvette. But we made plans to meet the Americans, sans Antonio, that night at the Tavern Jock, the Scottish Pub where Dexter worked. Because the guys just finished being special Black Ops spies in the army, I am not allowed to reveal their full names. I will call them only "Coma" and "Steve McCann."

The next day, despite the best efforts of the Tavern Jock, Brie and I were able to make it to Lucca, a little town about an hour away by train. Yvette stayed to explore Florence. There was an incident at the train station which involved me yelling, "Six minutes, Brie, you have six minutes! Go, go, go!" I feel like I should mention it, because it happened, but I don't want to talk about it.

Lucca was lovely. The whole town is encircled by a wall, built during the Middle Ages and fortified during the Renaissance. It's so wide that there's a little paved road along the top of the wall, with trees. We rented bikes for 2.50€ and rode around the top of the wall for an hour. It was so great, a gorgeous day. Definitely one of my favorite things of the whole trip.

We came back that evening and met Yvette and the two ex-spies for dinner at a place called, I think, Marone's, where I had amazing steak, and I don't even like steak that much normally, but it had just been a trip of too much pasta and pizza. But Coma and S.M. wouldn't shut up about the lunch place they ate at every day, Mario's, the best restaurant ever, blah blah blah, they laughed, they cried, it was better than the David.

So the next day we went with them to Mario's. And I have to admit, it was pretty fun, even though by this point in the trip I could have happily fasted for a week. Brie ate from a communal plate of beans, I'm not even kidding with you, so that was exciting in and of itself. It's one of those really Italian places where you don't know what you're ordering and the waitstaff kisses people on the cheek and someone always is filling your wine glass. Antonio got the whole table to sing "Happy Birthday A Te" to me. Maybe he thought I wanted to pick up women.

After lunch I was determined to see some sort of Renaissance Florentine art, so I went to the Bargello Museum by myself. Yvette said she would go but apparently when I said "art" she thought I said "shopping" and managed to lose me somewhere near San Lorenzo's Market. The Bargello's most famous piece is Donatello's David, you know, the kind of froofy one where he looks like he's playing dress up in his Grandmother's Easter hat. It was nice to be in the nearly-empty museum in the cool and quiet. I sat in the courtyard for a while and listened to distant Italian voices bouncing off the cobblestones.

After bidding farewell to the Tavern Jock and Coma and Steve McCann that night, we were up bright and late the next morning, ready to greet the new member of our party and see all that Renaissance stuff we hadn't been doing. But it was not to be.

isle of sand and fog

The morning we had to leave the South, it had become sunny outside, so we decided to go to Capri on our way to Florence. I was nervous about all the connections we would have to make that day in order to get to Florence in time to check in that night, but we thought it was worth it. We checked our bags at our B&B and walked down to the ferry landing at 8. After trying to get on a boat to Naples (it just seemed like the direction everyone was heading in) we found the right landing and boarded our little boat to the island. I took a picture of this man fishing in the harbor because he was just so Driftwood.

We arrived on the island, which I thought looked like a kind of older, Italian version of Catalina, and found the boats for the Grotta Azzurra... the Blue Grotto. We boarded a boat with a group of high schoolers from a Swiss boarding school for children of diplomats, and a Japanese tour group, and rode around to the other side of the island. Then we climbed off the boat into little canoes in groups of four or five, and a rower took us into the grotto.

We were fortunate that the grotto was even open that day, because it's closed often due to high tides or choppy waves. This actually was a high tide day, though apparently not too high for the rowers to work. We sat on the floor of the canoe, and as we approached the cave entrance, the rower told us to lie down. I couldn't really tell from the larger boat just how small the entrance was, and I had a sudden vision of not being able to get my head down enough and being decapitated. Or worse, just de-faced. I was in the far back and lying down basically meant just leaning back against the end of the canoe, not really getting below head level that much. It was such a weird feeling going through so quickly with the roof of the opening an inch or two from my face, but we got through with no defacements. (I had a little rougher time on the way out.)

Rowing around inside the grotto was really kind of amazing. The limestone on the sea floor reflects sunlight as a brilliant, almost unearthly blue color. The rower sang O Sole Mio and another Italian song that I didn't recognize, and the acoustics made it beautiful and haunting. Apparently after 4:00 in the afternoon, the rowers stop working and you can just go into the grotto and swim. It would be freezing to do it in February but swimming there in the summer is going on my list of Things To Do Before I Die. This is the video Brie took in the grotto, courtesy of my wonderful and talented brother, who sized it down for us. (Ryan, I will buy you a gelato. And by "you" I mean "me".)

On the way out, we had to lie down again, and there must have been a chain attached to the cave wall to let the rowers pull the canoes through, because suddenly I felt a really heavy chain being dragged quickly across my face. It startled me more than it hurt me (I was still worried about losing my nose) but I did have a red welty streak across my forehead and cheek for the rest of the day.

Back on the island, we found a little beach, and saw the sun, the for-real sun, for what seemed like the first time since I got here. It was still pretty chilly so we refrained from stripping down and running around yelling with giddiness. Brie skipped some rocks. I tried to skip some rocks. I think I made one skip once. After a while I started to worry we would miss our bus to Anacapri, one of the two little towns on the island, so I walked up the hill to check. Our bus was just pulling up, so I yelled for Brie and Yvette to run to where I was, and also to bring the coat and camera and bag that I had left on the beach. They thought this was deliberate on my part but I promise it just worked out that way.

We took the little bus up to near the top of the island, with some great views of the town and the water. Brie and I stood up when an older couple got on the bus, but this was nothing doing for Yvette. She did say she thought it was kind of cute and old world of us.

In Anacapri, which was really cute, we walked around for a while looking for the chairlift to Mt. Solare (recommended by the GB), gave up, and then found it. It was a twelve minute ride up to the top of the mountain, and it was supposed to be the best view of the island. We got on these little individual seats and rode to the top. It was fun even just going up, really quiet. We passed houses and some vineyards, and it got slowly colder as we crept up into the clouds. This is Brienne's Mary Poppins picture from the way down, possibly my favorite photograph so far.

As you may have guessed from that photograph, the views of the island from the top of the mountain were not exactly spectacular. I would say they were more... white. It was actually kind of cool, though. It had a very distant and lonely feel, something I haven't seen much of this trip, and it was kind cool to look down and see nothing but clouds. It reminded me of that scene in Magician's Nephew when Jill looks off the edge of the cliff and sees Eustace falling through the clouds. So I pushed Brie off.

After Brie was spirited away by Aslan, Yvette and I went out to eat at a place called American Bar, where the waiter was wearing a sweatshirt that said "Hot Buttered", which I wish we had gotten a picture of. Yvette makes fun of me, but sometimes I get tired of Italian food. So I got a "hamburgher", ok? So sue me. It was delicious. OK, so it wasn't delicious, but it seemed like it was because it was a freaking hamburger.

After that, we waited at the bus stop to go back down to the marina, which involved me yelling frantically for Yvette, who was shopping, when the bus came, and Yvette yelling "Coming!" and grabbing the little limoncello shot glasses she was buying out of the shopkeeper's hands and racing for the bus, and us boarding the bus at the last second, only to find it was the wrong bus. And then we got on the right bus, and then the right ferry, and then the right train to Florence, which seemed even then like an unbelievably lucky string of events... and that is the end of our time in Southern Italy.

so you want to be american

Brie and I are in Rome now, ready to begin the more internal part of the trip. This means more blogging, as I've been reunited with my favorite friendly neighborhood internet joint and I don't feel like I should be seeing the sights all day. I do have an arbitration that I need to start working on, and I will be taking gelato breaks, but I'll still catch you up on all our events, so don't you worry your pretty little heads.

Where was I... oh, yes, I was two weeks ago. Our second day in the South, we decided to take a bus ride down the coast to Amalfi. We scattered through the bus so we could each have a window seat without graffiti (because of the good book we were sure to sit on the ocean side). It was a beautiful, windy hour-and-a-half drive. That's windy as in hairpin turns, not breezy, for those of you reading aloud. Even through my increasingly incapacitating nausea, I could tell it was lovely. Here is proof. When we got off in Amalfi Brie didn't feel so hot either so I felt at least justified in my illness. (Mom, you would have LOVED it.)

We got off in Amalfi, and decided to take a walk into the next town of Atrani. The good book described this as a "stroll", something that Yvette would bring up as evidence against the accuracy of the GB for the rest of her time in Italy. Here are some pics from the walk to Atrani, which was basically 100% stairs in a narrow alleyway between buildings. Tiring but still really quaint. This is the step where Brie fell and nearly broke her elbow. She doesn't read my blog now that she's here so she won't know that I'm posting this.

When we got to Atrani, we ate at a little pizzeria on the water. Waves kept coming up and crashing over the patio edge near the lamppost, which was beautiful, but I couldn't catch it. Brie did discover one of her top five skills ("predicting waves"... full list to be disclosed in a later post), but unfortunately "listening to Brie" is in my bottom five, which is why I don't have a lovely water crashing over a lamppost picture. I had a local pasta, called... sciocolialiagica, or something. It was seafood pasta, it was great. Yvette actually took a picture of it, which I was going to include, but this post is kind of picture-heavy. Probably because this was two weeks ago, so my ridiculously abysmal memory is starting to chip away at the day.

Then we "strolled" back to Amalfi and kind of meandered around the city. Or, Yvette kind of meandered around and Brie and I sat in front of a church. Unfortunately, I think that about set the tone for my energy level for the rest of our traveling. I did get one of several "Brie being introspective" pictures, and this next one, which I kind of like but wish I had some sort of program so I could crop it. In case you can't tell, it's a reflection of a "limoncello" sign in a puddle.

After that we tried to figure out the bus system to get back to Sorrento. (Struggling to figure out how to get around has been somewhat of a recurring theme.) We were standing in the parking lot talking and we started walking back towards the town when Brie said, "I think we're about to get silly strung." We turned around (Yvette was already turned around glaring, she has an uncanny sense of danger, as well as an ability to ward it off with just a look) and a small gang of teenagers was right behind us holding up cans of what turned out to be shaving cream. I don't know what Brie's face looked like, but I was doing my best I COULD DESTROY YOU expression, and they suddenly peeled back, laughing. This is an out of focus picture of their backs, just to capture the moment.

While we were waiting in the parking lot, an older Italian man came up to us and started talking. Yvette was flashing us "danger will robinson" eyes mixed with "I'm bored" eyes, and eventually wandered off, leaving Brie and I to listen to a story that started out ok, about a girl from Los Angeles that he met when he was a front desk clerk at a hotel decades ago, but whom was stolen by his friend Giovanni the bartender who always gave the pretty girls free champagne, and then morphed into something that neither one of us could follow. After the story, he invited us for coffee, which we decided to do, because we're crazy like that.

At the coffeeshop, Angelo, as he was called by about twenty people who said "ciao" to him on the way, bought us cappucini and had himself an extra strong coffee. This is what coffee looks like in Italy. Try to use his fingers as a size reference. The espresso must have perked him up, because he started singing to us. Our favorite was called "So You Want to Be American" about an Italian boy during the war trying to get girls by dressing up as an American soldier, but I'm not sure that we got that one on video. I actually don't have sound here so I don't know which one this was. Maybe someone can watch it and tell me.

After that we headed back to the square, and Angelo said he was going to go wait on the bus. He walked towards the buses, and we found Yvette, who was watching a couple of gigantic, gorgeous half-naked Brazilian women dance in a crowd. (Still Carnevale.) After a little while, we went to get on the bus ourselves, and found all of them empty. We were afraid to ask anyone if they had seen Angelo, because we thought they would say, "Oh, a man named Angelo? With a green coat? But... Angelo died in a bus accident here 45 years ago."

the good book

We left Rome the next morning and headed for Sorrento by way of Naples. Literally every single person who heard we were going to Naples told us to beware of thieves, so I think I was basically vibrating with tension the whole time. If anyone walked anywhere near me I was ready to KICK THEM IN THE TEETH. In retrospect I think I was a little overly cautious, but we didn't get anything stolen so I guess you could say that we were the right amount of cautious.

We checked our bags at the Naples and train station and headed to the Archaeological Museum. On the way we stepped into a cafe for breakfast. A woman passed us as we walked in and I remember thinking there was a lot of commotion and yelling in Italian. I brushed it off until we sat down and Yvette asked us if we had seen that the woman had stolen a piece of pizza. That Snow Pea, she misses nothing. Brie and I split a neopolitan panino (some kind of roll with sausage) and Yvette got what she called a "calzone" but which was really a "ham doughnut." They were playing, like every other cafe in Italy, 80s American music. It was playing "Time After Time" when the waiter came over and changed it to Celine Dion. It was great, our first experience in Naples... a woman just stole pizza, Celine's playing, we're eating ham doughnuts.

Walking to the museum was interesting because Naples is pretty different from Rome. Much crustier, more laundry hanging out windows, virtually no tourists, me glaring at everyone. The museum was fine. It has most of the art and artifacts from Pompeii and other cities destroyed by Vesuvius, but a lot of the displays are poorly lit or only in Italian, so it was hard to really be as interested as I wanted to be. They did have a statue called the Toro that was pretty great, although against the white walls it looked much blander than it should have.

We went on a walk through Naples to see some of the city before heading straight for the pizza (my main objective in going to the city at all.) We saw tons of kids in costumes walking with their parents. Really elaborate costumes. I wanted to get some snapshots but I was afraid the parents would think I was a weirdo. One little girl, maybe 5, was dressed as a carnie vendor and was pushing a miniature popcorn stand. Another little boy was dressed as a doctor and his father was pushing a gurney with a babydoll strapped down to it. It was hilarious and awesome. The piazzas were covered with confetti.

We were walking for a couple of miles, trying to judge whether we had time to see more of the city before getting pizza. The restaurants almost all close between lunch and dinner so you have to be careful not to miss lunch entirely. We decided to walk down to the Bay of Naples, Mt. Vesuvius glowering at us over the water, and then turn around and head to the pizzeria. As I was taking this picture, I thought I felt a drop of rain. I said, "I think I just felt some rain." About fifteen seconds later we were drenched. We tried to move quickly back through the city, but in my hurry and general handicappedness regarding directions, I got us completely lost. For the first time that day. Yvette finally went into a hotel and had them call us a taxi. He raced us through the city and we got to this specific pizzeria that is supposed to be true Naples pizza just in time. The guy said something about closing as we walked towards him, but he must have been telling us that they were about to close, because he let us in. Or else our soaked, driven expressions just scared him. The pizza, unfortunately, was only fine. I mean, good, but not as earth-shattering as I was hoping for. There's actually a place near our apartment in Rome (which we call "Santa Monica Pier" because it's all sort of neon and weird, I'll get a picture when I go back) that has the best pizza I've had so far. We brought Brie there her first night and she agrees.

After lunch I decided I would get us lost in the pouring rain for the second time. We wandered around all over the place, getting directions from a guy who basically made me buy his unused bus ticket, insisting that it wouldn't matter that there was one ticket and three of us. Non c'e problema, non c'e problema. After walking for, oh, quite a while in the wrong direction, we got straightened out and made it back to the station. While we were waiting to leave, a guy came up to Brie and said, "I. Police. You. Beautiful." I let him talk to her for a minute or so (since you could tell from her horrified expression that she loved it), and then said, "Ok, basta. Basta." This means "enough", but Brie thought I was being much ruder. He looked at me like I had just killed his puppy but he did leave.

Sorrento, where we were staying, is a cute and lemony resort. We got moved into our fourth floor room, with the help of a dumbwaiter (the last place, it turns out, where they wouldn't have to lug their duffles up several flights of steps), and tried to decide whether to go out and do something that night. Yvette and I voted nay. Brie kept saying she wanted to and then fell asleep in the middle of a sentence, so that took care of that.

The next day we took a train to Pompeii. It was, shockingly, raining. We decided to buy audio guides since trying to carry a guidebook, a map, an umbrella, and a camera is difficult, and otherwise you can't tell what you're looking at. It turns out, actually, that you can't tell what you're looking at anyway. The audio guide was just like, "The Temple of Jupiter, as you see in this pile of ruined brick, was excavated in blah blah blah" and meanwhile you really have no idea if you're looking at the Temple of Jupiter or an ancient Pompeiian bagno. I think this was objectively difficult, I don't think it's just because I'm retarded with directions.

The first thing we looked at was fine because we all looked sort of confused and American and a tour guide took pity on us and gave us a free little mini-tour through the baths, which was nice. In one room there were some erotic frescoes, not a menu of activities like in the brothel we would see later, but just some friendly locker room decoration. The tour guide said something like, "And the young man in the first fresco is waiting for a surgeon." Then after he left we stared at it for five minutes trying to figure out what he was talking about. We came up with a theory, which I was going to confirm by posting a picture here and asking for opinions, but now looking at the photograph I took, I think it's much clearer when you can zoom in, and I'm afraid it would just be rude. I'll include a different picture of the baths instead.

After that we tried the audio guides, got bored, and wandered around in the rain. It was nice to be there when it was kind of lonely and empty. What's interesting about it is that it's a whole ruined city, so you're wandering through a whole city with roads and intersections and everything. I think if Pompeii were in California they would put you in a little car on a track and have narration in English and Spanish.

After a while of wandering, we started to get kind of frustrated that we couldn't figure out where we were, so I had to give in and pull out Rick Steves' Italy, which we have come to call the Good Book. Things brightened immediately, as they always do when you rely on the Good Book. We were able to actually find the casts of volcano victims, which we had previously walked right past. And the reason we walked right past them was because, even though they're the most interesting thing at the site, they're stuck in what basically seems like a tool shed. One of the casts was literally lying on a shelf below a stack of yellow plastic storage crates.

Just to explain what they are, in case you didn't really know this, which I didn't, the people of Pompeii who died in the eruption (about 2,000 out of a town of 20,000) were smothered by several feet of ash and not killed by lava. The ash clung to them, even filling in the folds of their clothing, and then hardened over the years. The bodies decayed, leaving a Pompeiian-citizen -shaped void, and archaeologists filled the cavities with plaster before chipping away at the ash-rock around them. Hence the plaster casts. They were quite eerie, even with their less than respectful surroundings.

For the rest of the day we wandered around, much happier despite the fact that it was still raining (rivulets of water rushed past on the road in the ridges carved by chariot wheels) and Yvette's map was falling apart. With the help of TGB, we found an ancient brothel with stone beds and stone pillows, an ancient fast food stand with holes cut in the countertops for pots, an Egyptian temple, a pizza place with big brick pizza ovens, and a huge private residence called The House of the Faun, which I may steal as a screenplay title.

That night, back in Sorrento, we took ourselves out to eat to a place called Giardiniello's, where I had really amazing canelloni and the waiter-owner gave us free samples of limoncello, the specialty of the region. His name was Franco I think, he was probably in his late sixties and had once lived in Los Angeles. He told he was wearing black because he had recently lost his father. We gave him our sympathies, and he said, "Well, that's life, you know. He was 92. But... I need him. I need him." On our way out he showed us his father's picture.

(I'm in Venice by now so I'm really far behind on this, but we have free internet access here so I'll try to see if I can can catch up a bit. Sorry, Mom.)

il papa don't preach

We're sitting in this cool little bar with blue light in Sorrento, where we've been for a couple of days. It's Carnevale, so kids in costumes are walking by the door outside. Bobby Vinton is playing. I just finished working on arbitration stuff... even in Italy. Unfortunately, I've gotten behind on here so I have to back up to Rome before I can talk about Naples and Amalfi. (Note for the VCs: Brie is here, safe and sound, jet-lagged but having a good time. We found her easily at Termini Station. She sends "kisses and squeezes to Schmoopie and Schmooperton" in a kind of high-pitched voice. Schmoopie and Schmooperton, I assume you know who you are.)

Friday night was our last day of school. The teachers gave Yvette and I each homework anyway, but I'm pretty sure I won't be completing it. Maybe Yvette will. That night we walked to the other side of Termini Station to a friend's new apartment, on a kind of creepy path that freaked us both out a little. We finally found our way away from the station, past a medieval wall into the neighborhood, which had a lot of graffiti and seemed rundown but was well-lit. The neighborhood was just off our maps, so it was a little difficult to find the place. An Italian couple came up to me and asked for directions to the exact street we were going. I meant to say, "I don't know, we're looking for it too," but what I said was, "I don't know, we're seeing it too." The guy looked at me for a second, and then said, "Ohhh," like "Ohhh, I get it, you're an idiot", which was pretty fairly well-deserved, and turned around to ask someone else. So then we just followed them and found Vincenzo's. (The New Yorker from my class who got laid off from Chase Morgan and moved here for a year.) We toasted with some wine to christen his new apartment and then walked to an enoteca near his house. We met people from school at this dive bar with no sign that had a band playing "folk Italian", which sounded suspiciously like Celtic Rock to me. It was fun in a surreal sort of way. On the way back a girl named Sara, who's traveling around Italy for a year working on various organic farms, walked with us and we felt a bit safer. (Incidentally, everyone we meet at the school has moved here for at least a year. When we say we're leaving in a month or two, they shake their heads in disappointment and pity.)

We wanted to get up early to hit the Vatican, so obviously I was miserable four hours later when the alarm went off. At the train station I was nearly accosted by a group of Roma girls who wanted to "help" me buy my train ticket, but Yvette gave them the evil eye.

The Vatican is pretty amazing. I guess one would assume that. We had actually gone to see just St. Peter's a few nights before, and were there when it was about to close, and was lovely and nearly empty. Even the courtyard is gorgeous. If you stand in front of St. Peter's you can look up to your right and see the Pope's window. (Il papa, they call him here. I kept hearing references to "papa" in random circumstances and didn't get what they meant for quite a while.) That's his study window, with the light on, and his bedroom to the right.

St. Peter's is built on the spot where Peter was crucified upside-down. His remains, buried in a nearby cemetery for three centuries, were secretly revered by persecuted Christians before Charlemagne made Christianity acceptable, and were eventually moved to the site where the basilica is built. The building is breathtaking in and of itself, especially because mass was ending as we came in and strains of organ music were dying away, but my favorite was Michelagelo's Pietà near the front entrance. It's just one of those things... it looks nice and everything in pictures, Mary looks a little oversized maybe, but when you look at it in the church, it's just... beauty itself. It's silly for me to post a picture after making this point but you should just look at it as much as possible I think.

Anyway, we went back to the Vatican Saturday morning to do the museum itself. We got up early to wait in a long, cold line outside. A Spanish couple stepped in front of us and a German couple behind, but I didn't say anything, because I didn't know how to say "no cutsies, no backsies" in either of those languages.

Our guide book (more on that later) told us to skip around a bit and see the Pinoteca first (paintings from the 13th through 17th centuries... normally you would see things in a chronological order) so we did, and I'm so glad because it was empty. We could walk through the rooms quietly and see the transformation from the pre-Renaissance to the Renaissance and watch the art becomes something else altogether. There was one room with a Caravaggio and another painting with a name I can't remember by a painter I didn't recognize but will figure out, it was of two saints being martyred, tied together and sliced open. It was so realistic and gripping I had tears in my eyes, and my throat is closing a little now thinking of it. It was so amazing to see these incredible pieces and be moved... and not just feel that I am supposed to be moved, which is a more common feeling.

The rest of the Vatican was fascinating but exhausting, because then we hit the crowds. It was really cool to see The School of Athens, for example, but we were basically getting mauled by tour groups. These are some pictures from Yvette:
After that we climbed the dome of St. Peter's. It was 4 euros to take an elevator up the first 200 or so steps and then climb the next 300, and 7 euros to climb the whole thing, which is what we did. The first part was actually the easy part. The last couple of hundred were narrow and either spiraling or sort of slanted sideways, so you hand to bend at a sideways angle at the waist. I don't think Yvette will ever be the same.

The amazing part was really the halfway up part, where you could look down at the inside of St. Peter's. That place is just amazing, looking up or down. There are seven-foot high black letters against a gold background that ring the church, spelling out in Latin everything Christ said to Peter in the Bible. From the floor they don't seem like they could possibly be so tall, but from above them you can get a slightly better idea of the vastness of the church.

The top was fine, but really crowded and sort of claustrophobic. Rome is a little smoggy (like home sweet home) and I'm not sure the view was worth the walk up. Yvette and I walked around the dome for about half an hour looking for each other, probably circling on the other side from one another like a Tom and Jerry cartoon.

That night we headed back to the room and then to the train station to meet our freshman starter, Brienne, looking much cuter in her new boots than us. We began resenting her immediately.

my pizza doesn't seem to know what it wants

Trying to speak to Italians here is a game... having a whole conversation in Italian wins me points. If the other person switches to English before the end of the conversation, I lose a point. If they speak to me in English as soon as they look at me, it's minus like five points. I'm far, far into the negative now.

I've been studying, obviously, and taking classes, and I think I'm speaking at a fairly decent level, especially just for shopping or eating or everyday sorts of conversations. But I feel like I'm missing some cells in my brain that would allow me to unscramble words that are spoken to me. It's always there that I start losing points. I'm fine with the, oh, what you would you recommend, I think this looks good, or do you have my size in this, or whatever, and then they say something back, and I just have to stare at them with a dumb expression because I NEVER HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT THEY SAID. Usually I just pretend I do, which is a weird sort of stubborn streak I've discovered in myself, and that usually gets me something other than what I've ordered or asked for.

I am thinking a bit in Italian though. The other night I came home an hour or two after Yvette, and realized when I got to our fifth floor apartment door that I didn't gave the keys to get in, because I had left them in the lock of the giant door leading into the whole building, the door that faces a huge busy piazza. I ran down the stairs, I was going the speed of light by the bottom, wondering how on earth I was going to tell Maria that some stranger had her keys because I had left them in the door, and I realized suddenly that the desperate prayer I was whispering under my breath was, "Piacere, piacere, piacere, piacere..." And God apparently speaks Italian because the keys were still in the lock.

Yvette and I went to dinner on Via Veneto the other night, and the waiter sort of tolerated my stabs at Italian and spoke slowly back to me. Later he said my Italian was very "sharp" (I think he said "sharf" actually) and that I was clearly a very intelligent girl. I mean, right, obviously, but it still was nice of him to notice. After we left he followed us out to the sidewalk and wished me a Buon San Valentino and blew me a kiss. That's how well I ordered my Cesare Insalata.

I did buy boots today in Italian. I asked for my size and said some were too tight and everything. I understood nothing of what the salesperson said back to me but it was shoe shopping, so it wasn't really too difficult to guess.

The problem is that everybody in Rome seems to not only speak English but to want to show it off. (The one time I just gave up and decided to speak in English right off the bat was when I needed to buy a phone card for Brie and Heidi and I wasn't sure how to ask for it... I got my whole speech out in English and the woman looked at me and said, "Non capisco." So then I was actually pretty excited because she would have to tolerate my broken Italian, and she did, and we had a little non-fluent conversation.) Many of the menus are also in English as well, though the translations are sometimes kind of funny. We were looking at a list of pizzas the other night and one was translated as "capricious".

Last day of school tomorrow. I'll just try to cram the rest of the language in then.

i would walk five hundred miles and i would walk five hundred more

I've been surprised at how easily we've been able to walk everywhere here. I thought we would be taking taxis or the metro more often, but we basically just schlep. It takes about half an hour to get to school, near the Spanish Steps, from our apartment, which is on the Piazza Santa Maria Maggiore. In the piazza, across the street from our place, is an enormous church decidated to Mary. In the 4th century Mary appeared in a dream to Pope Liberius, asking that a church be built in her name on the spot where he would find snow. The next morning, in August, he found snow on this square and so began building this church. Our landlady's son, who is studying to be a tour guide, told us that every August Rome celebrates this event by making artificial snow and holding mass.

We wanted to go to mass here, so Saturday we walked over to tour the church. In the nave there is a gold and silver sort of urn with what is supposed to be pieces of the manger in it. Before the urn there is a statue of a pope praying. (I'm sure it's a specific pope but I didn't catch which one.) Also in the church, which is decorated in the Baroque style, is the tomb of Bernini. His tomb is a simple step, I was looking for it and still missed it at first. Interesting that the father of baroque would have such an austere resting place.

I looked to see when mass was held, and there was a sign to inquire with the sacristry. I walked towards the sacristy and there was a schedule of times, and below that a sign in Italian that I couldn't quite translate, but was something about persons with documents who are authorized to celebrate the High Religion. This was all very intimidating. I don't know what documents would authorize me to celebrate the high religion, but I'm pretty sure I don't have them. I gave up on the idea. I'm kind of a wimp with stuff like that.

Saturday night we went to see a performance of La Traviata at an Anglican church on the Via Babuino, and got gelato on the way home. (Kristina, the gelato is good enough to make me forget the blisters I was getting walking in my going-to-the-opera shoes, I don't know if that answers your question or not.) Sunday morning our landlady Maria left us a note saying she had a booth at a flea market all day and we should come visit her. We decided to do that, which took us a couple of miles west and out of the city center for the first time. We made our way through the Piazza di Popola (where I saw the Statue of Liberty, thank goodness I can check that one off my sightseeing list) and half a mile into a sleepy area where everything was closed. We found the market and Maria, which I was kind of proud of. Yvette bought a necklace from a vendor, haggling by way of not really understanding the numbers the woman was saying.

After that we took our first metro ride to the Colosseum, arriving in time to see the Roman Forum but not the Colosseum or Palatine Hill. I'm trying to take pictures for you, Bethany. I don't know if 141 A.D. is "really ancient" or not, but this is the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina, the most intact structure in the Forum besides the arches. (You would love it, by the way, and need to come here.) It was very strange to stand there and think about the history of it. Yvette and I were talking about that Hanna-Barbera cartoon where the kids go back in time and meet David, etc., and how it just seems like the world should work that way.

We walked down and saw some of the other ancient sites, like the Circus Maximus, where Ben-Hur and those guys raced their chariots. It's mainly a big park now but you can see how it used to be a track. There was this group of people standing in a circle in the park. At first I thought they were doing calisthenics before a soccer game but then noticed one of the men was wearing a skirt, and they were doing a hokey-pokey type of dance to "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot", with Italian accents. I watched them for a couple of minutes but couldn't figure it out.

Later we did a little night walk and took some pictures. I bought a little mini-tripod from a street vender so I can have a longer shutter speed. Here are some pics...

The Roman Forum:
A crowd at the Trevi Fountain:
Random alley on the way home:

p.s. In case you were concerned, Yvette and I were reunited, and I read 14 pages of Harry Potter in a cozy little pizzeria, the warmest I've been in three days. It was the part where the Prime Minister meets Fudge, or Caramell in this version. I followed it pretty well, probably since I've already read it... twice.

p.p.s. Happy Birthday, Brie!