A Rome Day
Today I decided to check out some of the Roman sights that I had missed the last time I was here (Just over a year ago). I had seen the Vaticano and inside the Colosseo, so I tried to see different bits of Rome. So...
(What I really wanted to do is shop for more purses. A friend of my mom has put in a request for one, so I get to shop GUILT FREE. I would make a great personal shopper, by the way. That or a tour guide. If anyone is hiring...)
I started out at the pyramid or Cestius. Basically because I had been disappointed missing it last time, and because it is located on a subway line. My feet are tired! I do not have a tour book, but basically what I know about the pyramisd is that Julius Caesar went to Egype (where he met Cleopatra) and then came back to Rome and had the pyramid built as a souvenir. When in Rome, do as the Egyptians do! However Caesar actually did much better than the Egyptians, as it took just over 300 days to build the pyramid. I walked around it and in the back discovered a huge walled cemetary. A FAMOUS walled cemetary. Keats is buried there, and I think Goethe's son, and there are anciant graves (including 3 crushed men they found when excavating the pyramis), as well as some from only a few years ago. From what I can gather it is an exclusive place to be buried - diplomats who died while travelling and rich doctors. The monuments are gorgeous, though - statues of grief-stricken angels, cherubs, and even stone lovers cavorting on the graves.
After wandering through the gardens, I was starving. I was also really excited because I was on my way to see a church made all from bones. It had been closed last time I was in the country, and it was not a holy-sounding place. Just macabre.
I ate lunch at a little restaurant around the corner from the church. I had not eaten at a real restaurant at all this trip - maybe once - but I wanted to eat some petto di pollo. Last time I was in Italy I'd had some, and I had dreamed of it ever since.
(Petto di Pollo = breast of chicken, pounded flat, then salted with course salt, drenched in olive oil and lemon and maybe cream, and then grilled) Yes, it had cream on it. I am the traif-monster. This is the second time ever I have eaten milk and meat together, and I would feel bad about it if it had not tasted so good. It was SO good. SOO good.
So. The bone church. This is the church from an order of monks - over 4000 -- who, when they died, were left to shrivel and then used for art. I am not kidding. There was a clock made of femurs. There was a chandelier made of verterbae. Mountains of skulls. There were little bone cherubim fashioned by pairing skulls and hipbones for wings. I met an American dental hygenist outside the church, and as she had taken a class in anatomy she told me what all the bones were. There were beds made of bones. And then lying on the beds were dead monke in their habits. These were not all bones. There was shriveled flesh. It was absolutely disgusting. There was a flying skeleton holding a bone-scythe and a bone scale. There were three little boy-monks. There were bones everywhere, in whimsical patterns. Bones are not meant to be whimsical. Or maybe they are... I looked and looked, and then realized that I was breathing BONE-AIR and escaped.
My new American friend - Monica - suggested going for coffee and cakes, and so I did what I had been dying to do since the first time I was there - sit at a cafe and look cool. And we did! Afterwards we went to the Pantheon since she had not seen it yet. Then she want back to her hotel to pack (on her way home) and I sat and read out side the colesseum for awhile and then went back to my room for a supper of cheese and bread. My GARRET. How romantic, right?
**
Tomorrw I am going to Naples and Pompeii: I have always wanted to see Pompeii, ever since in grade 3 when we read in the reader about the little blind boy who lived in Pompeii. He had a little dog and every day at the same time the dog went to get him a bun from the bun shop. Well, one day Mount Vesuvius expoloded and people started running and screaming and the little boy did not know what to do. So his little dog led him to the boat nd disappeared - only to be found thousands of years later with the little bun in his little lava-filled mouth. I can't be the only one who remembers that story!
(What I really wanted to do is shop for more purses. A friend of my mom has put in a request for one, so I get to shop GUILT FREE. I would make a great personal shopper, by the way. That or a tour guide. If anyone is hiring...)
I started out at the pyramid or Cestius. Basically because I had been disappointed missing it last time, and because it is located on a subway line. My feet are tired! I do not have a tour book, but basically what I know about the pyramisd is that Julius Caesar went to Egype (where he met Cleopatra) and then came back to Rome and had the pyramid built as a souvenir. When in Rome, do as the Egyptians do! However Caesar actually did much better than the Egyptians, as it took just over 300 days to build the pyramid. I walked around it and in the back discovered a huge walled cemetary. A FAMOUS walled cemetary. Keats is buried there, and I think Goethe's son, and there are anciant graves (including 3 crushed men they found when excavating the pyramis), as well as some from only a few years ago. From what I can gather it is an exclusive place to be buried - diplomats who died while travelling and rich doctors. The monuments are gorgeous, though - statues of grief-stricken angels, cherubs, and even stone lovers cavorting on the graves.
After wandering through the gardens, I was starving. I was also really excited because I was on my way to see a church made all from bones. It had been closed last time I was in the country, and it was not a holy-sounding place. Just macabre.
I ate lunch at a little restaurant around the corner from the church. I had not eaten at a real restaurant at all this trip - maybe once - but I wanted to eat some petto di pollo. Last time I was in Italy I'd had some, and I had dreamed of it ever since.
(Petto di Pollo = breast of chicken, pounded flat, then salted with course salt, drenched in olive oil and lemon and maybe cream, and then grilled) Yes, it had cream on it. I am the traif-monster. This is the second time ever I have eaten milk and meat together, and I would feel bad about it if it had not tasted so good. It was SO good. SOO good.
So. The bone church. This is the church from an order of monks - over 4000 -- who, when they died, were left to shrivel and then used for art. I am not kidding. There was a clock made of femurs. There was a chandelier made of verterbae. Mountains of skulls. There were little bone cherubim fashioned by pairing skulls and hipbones for wings. I met an American dental hygenist outside the church, and as she had taken a class in anatomy she told me what all the bones were. There were beds made of bones. And then lying on the beds were dead monke in their habits. These were not all bones. There was shriveled flesh. It was absolutely disgusting. There was a flying skeleton holding a bone-scythe and a bone scale. There were three little boy-monks. There were bones everywhere, in whimsical patterns. Bones are not meant to be whimsical. Or maybe they are... I looked and looked, and then realized that I was breathing BONE-AIR and escaped.
My new American friend - Monica - suggested going for coffee and cakes, and so I did what I had been dying to do since the first time I was there - sit at a cafe and look cool. And we did! Afterwards we went to the Pantheon since she had not seen it yet. Then she want back to her hotel to pack (on her way home) and I sat and read out side the colesseum for awhile and then went back to my room for a supper of cheese and bread. My GARRET. How romantic, right?
**
Tomorrw I am going to Naples and Pompeii: I have always wanted to see Pompeii, ever since in grade 3 when we read in the reader about the little blind boy who lived in Pompeii. He had a little dog and every day at the same time the dog went to get him a bun from the bun shop. Well, one day Mount Vesuvius expoloded and people started running and screaming and the little boy did not know what to do. So his little dog led him to the boat nd disappeared - only to be found thousands of years later with the little bun in his little lava-filled mouth. I can't be the only one who remembers that story!
posted by Melamondiale @ 12:39 PM
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