Rome!
We are writing this one together - passing the notes around the table during our last dinner in Rome.
DOD: Assisi and Florence both had a feeling that they're history had been very intentionally preserved and current life was being carefully conducted on top of it. Rome feels like modern life is happening full throttle and history is thrusting up out of it like rocks in a river.
WM: At first we didn't actually know where we should go on these last two snippet-y days. Then I said, look guys, we've been in Italy for over a month and we have these two little random days with no plan whatsoever ( that's a first to be honest) why not go to Rome? So they muttered late into the night discussing our future endeavors. They decided to go to Rome!
JT: Really I was motivated almost entirely by the desire to see Michelangelo's Pieta, which is in St Peter's. And weirdly, even though it is smaller than I thought and behind glass, it was more moving than I expected. Mary is so the lead character in that sculpture, and Jesus is so clearly dead, and she is so young she looks like she has come unstuck in time, and she looks like a real person, not a sculpture of a person. We also had Roman white pizza.
DOD: There are many more English speakers here. So instead of an animated but pleasantly unintelligible Italian murmur around you at all times you have to incorporate other people's conversation into your experience.
WM: Rome itself is very different from Assisi or Florence or Venice. It is big and loud and full of tourists even in January. I was kind of taken aback at first but then we started to see amazing sites like the Colloseum (duh). The Sistine Chapel ceiling which was painted by Micheangelo and La Pieta which was sculpted by that same master. These two pieces of art were mind blowing especially the Sistine Chapel. I had learned about how the ceiling had been painted by one man over the course of 4 years but to see the masterpiece in person was truly special. The fact that all of the people look like real humans with real lives and feelings moved me in a way only art can. We also saw the spot where Julius Caesar was killed ( I know right......I was shocked) All in all Rome was extremely beautiful and historical.
JT: It feels like 2 days is kind of the perfect time to be in Rome. Maybe not, but for us yes! We have managed to see the Vatican museums ( hall of maps!), St Peters, the Colloseum, various ruins, the Pantheon, the Trevi Fountain (coins!), wandering around the hip Monti neighborhood , got two hair cuts, dinner at 2 trattorias and lots of gelato for WM.
DOD: Time. At the Colloseum you could feel it; time like a weight pulling downward and lifting upwards at the same time. Us: a single family in a countless story of families who've visited that ground.
JT: WM is eating strudel-flavored ice cream right now. The Monti Neighborhood is a cross between Wicker Park and Mardi Gras. WM and I went into a little salon and got Roman Haircuts, which we love. Then we found a ton of weird funky places to look at and be hip in. Our BandB is really funny and small with canopy beds and a graffiti covered alley. We have a little balcony where we eat breakfast and smoke cigars. And the bed is incredibly firm, it's like sleeping on table and I love it.
DOD: We were doing the slow tourist late-afternoon, post-lunch, site-visit shuffle on our way back to our hotel and noticed some ruins to our right. Google'd them out of interest and it turned out it was the site of the Pompey Theatre where Julius Caesar meant his ignoble end.
WM: I forgot to mention the gelato in Rome. I got some really amazing gelato in the thousand year old city. I ate it by the ruins of the once powerful empire and thought about those poor romans who didn't get to eat the deliciousness in my hand. I suppose they got to see and be in those buildings in the height of their beauty.
I also ate some great gelato by the Pantheon which was definitely an experience to remember...which was the feeling of this whole 5 week trip.