First Week of Exploring & Sketching

So one week is done...wow! It feels like I have been here for a month already! I have a favorite place for all my food, favorite shopkeepers, cafes, and clubs. This was our first week of classes and Dave and Stanely took us to some classic, beautiful sites to sketch. Here are a few....


Pantheon: yea, I missed it! Eleni, Marco and I took a night walk to the Vodafone store. We took a new way, and as I bit into my freshly made, warm Margarita Pizza Eleni asked if I had been to the Pantheon yet. No, I said, hoping that we would maybe walk by on the way back to the apartment. Was it too far out of the way though? "Oh, well that's it!" Eleni said to me, pointing to the VERY LARGE AND OLD brick cylinder that was approximately 50 feet from us. Wow, I'm a dumbass!! And yes, it's bigger than you think, and just as old as everyone says. The night lights lit up the purple Egyptian Marble columns which were quaried as one piece. Well I was torn: eat the pizza or throw it out and walk inside? I ate the pizza and walked inside for the first time two days later when I took this shot! I always thought they were made in photoshop...no, I did it myself!!! It's all real!


Next was Campidoglio. OK, kids, history lesson: just near the Colloseum is the ancient Forum of Rome. Ceasar and his friends partied it up, ate food, lounged around and watched people get eaten by Lions and Tigers...and some Bears all in his own backyard...oh Roma! Michaelangelo created a formal piazza just west of the Old Forum, drew some lines on the ground with marble and named it Campidoglio! Okay, all kidding aside this urban space floods down the hill into the streets of Rome and faces St. Peters and the Vatican. Michaelangelo made the bold statement that Church and State are not seperate. Pretty cool that you can say that with a building! Similarly, fast-forwarding to WWII when Mussolini came to power, he built the monument to Vittorio Emmenual. This grandeous scale building is, with affection, commonly called "the typewritter" or "the wedding cake" by Italians. (that was sarcasm! They hate it!) Mussolini physically turned the back of the building to the Campidoglio, stating that he did not have care or respect for the state. At the end of the war, the Italians hung him. Don't mess!!


A few days later we visited Ville Giulia, which was the house of Pope Pius III. On the bus ride there, Judy Hallet (Stanely's wife) got pick-pocketed. Just another experience on the Rome public transportation. After almost getting run over and loaing half the group, we arrived at Ville Giulia. It consists of three outdoor "rooms" which were used for partying and entertainment. I think I could get married there!!! This was the first time on this trip that I had felt the presence of ancient Roma. I could see men walking in robes and grand parties with wine, music, and dancing. What more could I ask for?

If anyone has been to rome, you know that everything is small here. Lets just say the Hummer is larger and can fit more people! Needless to say, not all of us made it on the bus, so we decided to walk back. We stopped for a cappuccino (thanks Dave!) and as the sun set, I walked into the Pantheon at night. yea, I think that will do for a front foyer in my house!!

The weekend led to great dinners (Friday night's made by yours truely!), sleeping in, dancing, and SALDI, the government mandated sales which last a month! Lines of people, elbows bumping...this was worse than 5th Ave at Christmas time for one reason: the only thing worst than a New Yorker is a rich, angry Italian woman who got pissed because you grabbed the dress she wanted! Oh and those shoes, she'll take those too!!

And there's so much more to explore!!!