Rome Recap

Henry James, one of my favorite authors, wrote a short story titled Daisy Miller: A Study, which tells of a young American woman who travels to Rome with her family towards the end of the 19th century. Although members of the upper-crust of American society, the Europeans can’t believe how tacky these people are: they’re on a first-name basis with their valet, and Daisy’s mother allows her daughter to flit about the city entirely un-chaperoned, meeting natives and soaking up the local culture, something which, frankly, is a little overly flirtatious, thank you very much. Towards the end of the story, Daisy is invited to take a walk around the city at night, ending up at the Coliseum; there was a time when it was open to visitors at all hours – not so easy for me. As Daisy stands there in the center of the enormous stadium (did you know it could seat up to 50,000 people and had a retractable roof, bathrooms, concession stands and running water up to its third floor?), she is reminded about “Roman Fever,” the euphemistic term given to malaria, which was problematic in the city until the 20th century. Being young and impetuous, Daisy stays and enjoys basking in the most emblematic symbol of Europe’s ancient history and culture. Unfortunately, Daisy falls ill several days later and eventually dies. The symbolism implied here is that Daisy, the young American who challenges the accepted social norms in Europe, is destroyed by their weighty history and is unable to overcome them. Not the most uplifting short story, especially, perhaps, for an American traveling in Rome, but it’s chock-full of symbolism on a whole bunch of levels, and I love it.

Luckily for me, I did not have an experience similar to Daisy’s, though it was an amazing feeling to be able to stand in front of the Coliseum at night, with no tourists or souvenir-hawkers in sight, and soak in just how amazing it was to be in Rome. The city was founded somewhere around 800 BC – though settlements at least 200 years older have been found there – by the sons of the wolf-princess Rhea Silvia and the god Mars, Romulus and Remus. At least that’s what the legend says… and we do know that Romulus was the first King of Rome, though I’m not sure how his mother would feel about being referred to as a she-wolf. The first night I was there, I spent my time walking around hitting the obligatory sights, like the Spanish Steps (basically just a huge set of steps up to a church which young Romans find ideal for public displays of affection and pot-smoking), the Pantheon (Pan- meaning "all" and -theon meaning "gods"), an ironically re-designated ancient Roman temple which is now a Catholic basilica, and the Trevi Fountain, which provided a principal plot point for the movie Three Coins in the Fountain. The tradition goes that whoever throws a coin into the fountain will return to Rome; I couldn’t risk looking any more pathetic than I already did by tossing money into the fountain alone, but I liked Rome enough to head back someday, regardless. You must realize, though, that by fountain I really mean Disney-quality animatronic-like Pirates of the Caribbean backdrop, complete with colossal Neptune riding tamed seahorses. Again, bear with me until I can get some pictures up here.

My first full day in Rome was taken up at the Vatican, the seat of the Catholic Church and the smallest sovereign state in the world (though I wondered how it would stack up next to Mashantucket, CT). I started out at the Vatican Museums, and I really can’t describe what it was like to be there. Not only was the entrance fee practically extortion, even after my student discount, but I was constantly overwhelmed by the enormity of the palaces into which the Vatican’s treasures are stuffed. The most telling example of this was when I began walking down a series of never-ending hallways, sparkling with gold from every surface except for the ceilings, which were covered in priceless frescoes by the likes of Michelangelo and Rafael; honestly, I must have walked down the same hallway for about 20 minutes. On either side of the hallway are ancient chests and wardrobe-like furnishings, which open up to reveal the small relics, maps, and personal effects of dead popes, cardinals, bishops, monsignors… the list goes on. In one lay four rings from the 14th century, each with a stone bigger than my fist – there is no way I would have been able to lift my hand off the ground while wearing one of these things. Through the next doorway was an entire room full of these chests that simply weren’t open, leaving the visitor to guess which huge collection of Church wealth lay in seclusion, away from the people who paid for it to begin with. I don’t want to get political, but despite the beauty and professional layout of the museum, I left it feeling disgusted by the amount of wealth the Church has amassed over the years while people still go hungry. But anyway. The highlight was undoubtedly the Sistine Chapel, the 15th century room into which the papal conclave is locked to elect a new pope, with ceiling frescoes designed by Michelangelo. (Side note – did you know that the word fresco comes from the rapid method of painting on the wet - fresh - stucco of ceilings, the artist needing to finish the design before the stucco dries? A little gem I picked up from the Aer Lingus special on Michelangelo.) As much as I was looking forward to my visit to the chapel, and as indescribably beautiful and ingenious as the paintings are, I was a little let down when I actually got in there. I practically had to sprint through the museum in front of hordes of tourists with guides using megaphones, and by the time I got there, emerging from the basement’s dimly-lit stairwells only about half an hour after the museum opened, the chapel was already packed. It’s a strange thing to be in the presence of the most recognizable piece of art in the world – I don’t think it could possibly live up to the hype. Much smaller than I had anticipated it being, pretty far away (it being on the ceiling), and only one of a series of nine frescoes depicting scenes from Genesis, the big portrait of Adam and God touching fingertips was only a small part of the room. I almost liked the massive work behind the altar (The Last Judgment, also by Michelangelo) even better. It’s a great piece, commissioned by a pope in the throws of the Protestant revolution to encourage good Catholics not to be tempted from the Faith. The demons were particularly amazing, as I’m pretty sure I’ve seen masks hanging in Wal-Mart just like some of their faces.

After seeing the museums, I went around the corner to St. Peter’s Basilica, the largest/second largest Basilica in the world, depending on whom you ask. If you read my Milan entry, you know that I was blown away by Il Duomo, the cathedral there; this tops it. And how could it not? With a capacity of 60,000 worshipers, the basilica was consecrated in 326 AD on the exact spot where St. Peter was martyred, a former Roman stadium. It was later rebuilt in the 16th century to its current form, and a spectacular form it is. With a total height of 449 feet from the floor to the top of the dome designed by Michelangelo, the basilica represents one of the most holy sites in Christianity, the high altar dedicated to St. Peter and built directly over his (supposed) grave out of bronze melted down from the portico of the Pantheon, and only accessible to the current pope. Very cool. I went up to the dome, got a little dizzy looking down to the beautiful marble floor from 500 feet up there, and then went outside for some of the most spectacular views of Rome you can imagine. Getting up there was a bit of a feat, as the staircases are curved within the dome, so the walls on either side of you slant in towards the staircase as you walk up it in a spiral. But it was absolutely worth it. I also thought the massive list of popes dating back to St. Peter was pretty cool – all popes are “descendants” of Peter, the first pope - and I listened to John Rutter’s Gloria (a very majestic choral piece) the whole time I was walking around the church, which set the scene nicely.

That night I spent some time walking around Via Venetto, the street on which you’ll find all the five-star hotels from the 19th century. Even though I wasn’t staying in one of them, it was fun to think that I was in the same area where the likes of Henry James or Audrey Hepburn would have been on their own trips to Rome. And, in the interest of full-disclosure, I did spend far too much money on a pair of cashmere-lined deerskin gloves from a custom glove shop there; my other gloves had begun to fall apart when I lost one of them, so this seemed like an opportune time for my one and only souvenir-like purchase in Italy. I’m pretty sure they’re a half-size too big and were made by sweatshop workers, but they are wonderful. Just up the road from the likes of Harry’s Bar and Café du Paris on the Via (see La Dolce Vita) is the Villa Borghese and its surrounding park, dating back to the 17th century. I spent the whole morning of the next day there after briefly stopping in a church whose Capuchin monks decorated the entirety of their burial ground with the bones of their deceased members. The light fixtures, crown molding, strange mummified child hanging from the ceiling are all made out of bones, and there are even a few mummified or skeletal monks standing around dressed in their original robes to add to the mood. I got my dose of the macabre in for the year, anyway. The park was lovely and reminded me a lot of Oxford, which made sense after I discovered that it was designed to reflect English naturalism. The best part of the park is probably the actual Villa, which houses the Galleria Borghese. The most difficult and complex museum I’ve ever been lucky enough to sneak my way into, I had to call twelve hours in advance to make a ticket reservation and show up to the museum 30 minutes early for a security check and to strip myself of everything I was carrying. The villa was built by Cardinal Scipione Borghese as his private residence and sculpture museum, and when the mansion was converted into a museum, they needed to change little of the interior. Known as one of the best museums in Rome, it is home to some of the most spectacular pieces of sculpture I’ve ever seen. Almost every room on the bottom floor is centered around a sculpture retelling a scene from a classical mythological story, many of which were completed by Bernini in the 17th century. My personal favorite was without a doubt Apollo and Daphne; the god Apollo lusted after the nymph Daphne and, wanting to remain pure, she asked her father to change her into something to protect her from the pursuing god. Just as Apollo's hand reaches the nymph's stomach, her father, Peneus, transforms his daughter into a laurel tree. Bernini captured the exact moment that Apollo's hand reaches Daphne, though where he touches on her stomach has already turned into delicately brushed bark, her whipping hair and fingertips sprouting leaves and tiny branches. (This picture is courtesy Artchive.com)


My other favorite was also by Bernini, The Rape of Persephone. Long story short, the god of the underworld, Pluto, drags Persephone, sorta-kinda the goddess in charge of earth fertility, down to his lair. Bernini shows us Persephone struggling away from her captor, his hands digging into her soft flesh. I stared at this for a good ten minutes without moving, and there were moments when I forgot that this was just a sculpture. Look at the detail! (Both pictures from Wikipedia)



The museum also had an impressive collection of ancient Roman sculpture, but I was more drawn-in by the stuff from the Renaissance. I've decided I'm a bigger fan of the marble stuff than I am of paintings.

The next day was all about the Coliseum, the Palatine (basically a posh, ancient Roman suburb), and the Roman Forum, the most famous of the ancient Roman shopping areas in the city. These were very, very cool, though perhaps the most exciting moment of my day was when I understood the announcement made to the crowd waiting to get into the Coliseum (exclusively in Italian, for whatever reason) that anyone could skip the line by paying an extra four euro for a guided tour. I was interested in a guided tour anyway, so I did just that. However, the best part was when I pretended to be a Spanish citizen to get a discounted rate on the entrance, and spoke to the Italian guy at the ticket window, very convincingly, if I do say so myself, in heavily accented English. The guided tour, which my guidebook said to avoid because they are often so crowded, had four people on it, and I learned much more than I would have by wandering around acknowledging that everything was very beautiful but not really understanding any of it. This was exactly what happened at the Palatine and the Forum, which are kind of like big parks in the middle of the city strewn with the ruins of old houses and shopping malls. It was amazing, but I really could have used an audio guide.

Despite being in these incredibly historic surroundings, the best part of my day was when I stumbled upon a tiny, local bakery and sucked down a great cappuccino and had them pack me a gorgeous veggie sandwich on warm focaccia bread and a bagfull of those weird Italian fried cookie-like things which are always covered in confectioner's sugar as a picnic lunch, all for five euro; just in case you were wondering, those cookies are called frap. This I took with me up to the top of the Capitoline Hill, one of the seven hills of Rome, the seat of Roman government, and the name from which we get the English word capitol, and had a great lunch sitting in a plaza designed by Michelangelo while basking in the sun in 55 degree weather, all with sweeping vistas of the Forum. There were no tourists about and the museums were closed, which really added to the experience. I came to realize over the course of the trip that the quiet moments I wasn't expecting, away from the actual "must-see sights" were what I enjoyed the most. That held true the next day, too, when I went to check out the Old Appian Way, that famous, perfectly straight highway connecting Rome to Brindisi, begun back in the 4th century BC. I took a subway out of the city to a stop which dumped my in the middle of a residential area of huge apartment buildings which reminded me a lot of Granada. I wandered around there for a while, and had a great coffee and pastry in a local bakery, after standing in there awkwardly for ten minutes while pretending to be on my cell phone speaking in Spanish, so that I could figure out what it was I had to say to whom in order to get my food - it was a pretty complex process, but it was worth it. Then, one street over, I saw the 6,000 acre Regional Park of the Appia Antica open up before me. I wasn't expecting this at all, and it was amazing. The park is, in reality, made up of the private estates of ancient villas built along the Appian Way in Roman times, so horses, goats, and chickens still roam wild, there are lakes and ponds, ancient walls and temples, crumbling tombs, and lots and lots of joggers. You must remember, this is all within 20 seconds of a subway stop! I liked the park so much that I decided to go back to my hotel, change into my running stuff, and head back for a more thorough exploration. This time I actually found my way to the Appian Way, which is a cobblestone street just about big enough for a Mini-Cooper. I loved it. I was out for my run for about four hours that sunny Sunday afternoon, occasionally walking through free-access archaeological sights or rolling, (unbelievably) flowering public gardens in the 60 degree, spring-like weather. (Picture from Wikipedia) It was free, it was beautiful, and it was educational. What more could I ask for? It was one of the best afternoons of the trip.

That about does it for my Italy trip. The last day in the city I really just bummed around, finding my way into the former Jewish ghetto at one point, which reminded me of the narrow, winding streets of Spain, lighted by gas lamps. The next day, I was off to the airport yet again. And now I'm in Granada. The weather is as bad here as it's been in 30 years, or so they tell me, but at least the temperatures haven't dipped much below 40 degrees. Even with the rain here, I wouldn't trade it for what everyone at home is dealing with. I'll fill you in on the goings-on around here once they get interesting.

Venice (and a little Rome)

I have a general rule when traveling alone that pictures are to be taken only in the very most select and deserving of circumstances; I hate the feeling of being singled out as a tourist, especially as one unpopular enough to be traveling without a group of friends. Venice, therefore, was a real problem. I’ve never been anywhere else where every single back alley, broken down bench, and beat-up boat was worthy of its own coffee table book. From the second one descends the stairs from the train station, the views are spectacular, the Grand Canal opening up like a Main Street on the Mississippi floodplain with better architecture. Though why, I ask, did someone think it was great urban planning to put four flights of stairs up to a train station with no ramp for luggage or wheelchairs? Venice’s “subway” is a network of boats called vaporetto, which zip around on a number of different routes, the most useful of which makes a large circle of the Grand Canal. They’re wonderful because, although expensive at 6.50 euro per ride, they offer the only real way to see the Grand Canal as it was meant to be experienced (from the water), they save quite a bit of leg-work over the bridges with luggage, and they’re a huge savings over the private taxi boats or the gondolas, which cost something like 80 euro per 40 minute ride. Needless to say, I took a vaporetto, and left the gondolas to the happy and significantly poorer couples.

I took a bit of a chance on my hotel in Venice; its reviews online said its renovated palace offered spectacular rooms, though it was nearly impossible to find. Knowing this going into it, I braced myself for some fruitless stomping around with my luggage, but after half an hour in the piazza where the hotel should have been, I gave the reception a call. The man on the phone directed me to a green door in another plaza that sported a sign, the San Lio Guest House. This was not my hotel. I informed him of this, when he assured me that it was indeed where I needed to be. After two flights of stairs, I found myself in a near-empty room with a chair, a video camera pointing in my face, and a sign dangling from a thread on the ceiling. The sign instructed me to take a map from the box on the chair, because the check-in for the San Lio Guest House was at a newly-opened inn, my hotel, only a short walk from this bizarre interrogation room. The effort was worth it, thankfully, because my beautiful room had soaring 15-foot ceilings, a private patio with table and lounge chairs, and a plasma TV – this was all for about 10 euro more than a hostel in Venice. Like someone wrote in their review of the place which I read before I left, I’m pretty sure the hotel is a front for some sort of illegal activity – the receptionist was odd, the room was too good to be true, the back alley down which I had to travel alone to get to the place was scary, and the extensive video-surveillance system throughout its hallways in combination with the very secure entry procedure was disconcerting. But, I had a nice stay, when all was said and done.

Venice was breathtaking. I’m kicking myself for not being able to put pictures up, because I simply can’t describe what it was like to walk around its streets. Nearly every building is surrounded on three sides by water, covered in sculptures, stained glass and balconies, and is pleasantly and atmospherically in disrepair or listing to one side, adding to the magical feel of the place. Much of the time I felt like I had slipped into the 18th century, walking through covered porticoes with the water from the canals lapping over onto the sidewalks, poking around shops which sold ceramic carnivale masks by gaslight, or sipping my espresso in a café on St. Mark’s Square to escape from the drizzle. Unfortunately, the only two cafés on the square, Caffè Florian and Caffè Quadri, both from the 17th century(!), are highly competitive, highly pretentious, and insanely expensive. But of course I had to try them. I popped into Caffè Florian for coffee one day while waiting to visit St. Mark’s Basilica, the church on the square which is amazing for its interior, entirely covered in gold mosaics. Florian is the more ostentatious of the two, with frescoed walls and servers in white tuxedos who needed to be tripped to pay the customers any attention. At 8.50 euro, I was expecting the best cappuccino of my life, which I didn’t get, but my vegetable quiche was OK. The presentation, though, is beautiful, everything served on silver with silver utensils. I went into Caffè Quadri my last night in town because I was lonely, cold, and all I wanted for dinner was good coffee and a piece of chocolate cake. The interior is brighter, the servers wear black tuxedoes (note the contrast from the white ones across the way), the presentation is identical, and they offer copies of the International Herald Tribune for lonely individual diners. Also, my 8.50 euro cappuccino at Quadri was perhaps the best I’ve ever had, with foam so perfectly steamed that the bubbles were all but invisible and a spoon would stand up in it. This place won.

Venice has a fascinating history, owing much to the fact that it was a sovereign republic for many centuries, before succumbing to the Spanish, the Austrians, the French and, finally, the Italians. When it ruled itself, it had a highly developed and complex political system, headed by the Doge, something in between a king and a pope. I visited his palace overlooking the lagoon, which contains one of the largest rooms in Europe, the Sala del Maggior Consiglio (Great Council Hall), where the Venetian equivalent of the Senate would meet. To give you an idea of the scale of this place, one of the hundreds of paintings in there is a 73 by 23-foot oil. They used it every Sunday for their meetings, but I thought it would be ideal for a ball. Unfortunately, I could never have thrown one in there, since everyone in the world whom I like would have fit comfortably in the doorway. I also, thanks to a very helpful conversation I had in French with the ticket woman at the beautiful Chiesa Miracoli (ask me sometime about my spontaneous nosebleed there), got myself the six-euro Chorus Pass, which granted me admission to sixteen churches across the city. I wish I had known that earlier in the day, because it would have saved me some money at the massive Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, where there is a fascinating statue in its courtyard of Jesus and God the Father above a well. This doesn’t mean much unless one bears in mind that, for centuries, the patron of Venice was Neptune, and God, hanging out up there suspended over a well, has a flowing beard of seaweed down to his knees. I think the artist was making a statement.

So now I’m in Rome. I left Venice on the train, and while I don’t think it beats Spain, necessarily, Italy is beautiful. Especially Tuscany, where there really are villas everywhere and those weird, conical pine trees. I’m starting to hit my stride with Italian – at least I can make my way through ordering now without using English – and I can understand just about everything I read. I’m also starting to get the hang of restaurants. It was pretty hit-or-miss in Milan and Venice (the low point being the tourist-specific dive in Venice where the menu was in five languages, always a bad sign, and nearly everything was pre-frozen). Last night I attempted to find a specific restaurant from my guidebook; it had closed, so I moved onto my second choice, under the “budget” category. That one was in someone’s garage and looked like a brothel. My third choice was on a street down which I wasn’t about to venture alone, so, now three hours into my search which had taken me back and forth across the city twice, I stopped at the first place where I didn’t feel like I would die from the food or be molested while trying to eat it. Leave it to my discriminating standards to pick a place which falls under the “very popular - reservations required!” category in my guidebook. Not that I knew until I was back in my hotel room last night, but it did explain a lot. At 7:30, they were just opening, so when I walked in and the host was busy, I sat myself down at a tiny little window-side table. He asked if I had reservations, I asked if I needed them, and I was grudgingly moved to the table onto which the front door opened. Still, I think it was worth it. I tried the bread pasta (a first for me – a little like a weird French toast) with pesto sauce and a sirloin steak. As much as I try to assimilate, I’m still American, and it had been way too long since I had eaten red meat. Today, like a true Italian, I had a croissant for breakfast, pizza at 11, pizza at 3, and gelato for dinner. The pizza this afternoon was phenomenal, from a local bakery where nobody spoke English and my portion was cut off from the oblong, paper-thin pies with kitchen shears and weighed. I thought the businessmen in ties, standing around outside the bakery smothering themselves in tomatoes sauce was a good sign, and I was right. I needed about half of what the woman gave me to eat, but she was very friendly, and I couldn’t explain what I meant anyway, so of course I just had to eat it all. The dough was perhaps the best I’ve tasted. I’ve also been extensively testing gelato around the country, and I asked my hotel manager where I should get some in the neighborhood. He directed me to a “factory – very famous in Rome!” which didn’t look like much but had huge lines. For two euro I got a tre gusti – three flavors, a quantity at this place which would be equivalent to a four or five scoop sundae in the US. My niocioccolato (Nutella), stracciatella and pistachio gelato came in a fresh cone topped with a mound of freshly whipped heavy cream. I haven’t eaten anything since.

Milano

Milan surprised me. This is due in large part to some preconceptions I had about the city based on the experience here of my favorite author, Bill Bryson, and, to be honest, initially I shared his opinion. The only reason I ended up here in the first place was because there was a direct (and cheap!) flight with RyanAir from Gothenburg, Sweden – not that I ever made it that far north. After missing my flight out of Newark because the hell that is New Jersey conspired with bad weather conditions to ruin my trip, I cancelled the northern itinerary and flew with Aer Lingus directly to Milan. As the city forever in heated competition with Paris as fashion capital of the world, it is a very industrial place. In fact, though my hotel was only about a 30-minute walk from the city center (and only ten minutes from the train station, whoo travel planning and saving on taxi fares!), there wasn’t much to redeem the area, other than the actual Milanese who out-numbered the tourists. The city radiates around Il Duomo, the largest gothic cathedral of its kind and the third largest cathedral in Europe; this is, needless to say, one impressive church. Between the nearly 150-foot tall stained glass windows, hundreds and hundreds of statues covering the exterior, scores of flying buttresses, acres of marble, engineering taken care of by Da Vinci, and one of the nails used to crucify Jesus Christ on the cross hanging above the altar, it offered just about everything one could ask for in a European cathedral visit. That said, the interior was dark and uninviting, and was a big letdown after the stunning and vibrant exterior. That’s about all I saw on my first day in the city; the flights over were uneventful (possibly with the exception of the menu of snack foods offered, where I spied a juicebox called Jutopia – does anyone else find that funny? Sound it out…) and comfortable, since I charmed the check in lady, and she gave me an entire exit-row to myself with no chairs in front of me. The rest of my initial exploration of the city was spent walking around its labyrinthine streets, which I only vaguely began to understand by the time I left. Il Duomo is situated on the Piazza del Duomo, which reminded me of pictures I’ve seen of St. Mark’s Square in Venice – wall to wall beautifully dressed people playing with pigeons. The whole area around the cathedral was packed at every time of day, due in large part to the Galleria, said to be the oldest shopping mall in the world. It was completed in the second half of the 19th century, and is a massive and stunning open-air tunnel of glass and steel (pictures to come when I can locate the cord which connects my camera). As one would expect, it was filled with a host of glamorous shops, but the real Milanese powerhouses can be found along the streets leading to La Scala, perhaps the most famous opera house in the world. These streets are narrow, cobbled, and is home to the likes of Etro, Prada, Armani and others. At one point, in front of an ancient palace now home to some of the EU’s “Rapidly Deployable Troops,” I heard behind me what I took to be an army training exercise, owing to the perfectly in time clumping of boots. No, just about 25 immaculately dressed women out on the town with armfuls of bags. Welcome to Milan.

The language is proving frustrating for me. I can understand almost everything that’s said to me, but I can’t really respond – when people do ask me direct questions, I instinctively want to answer in Spanish, which just confuses a lot of people. But it’s fun. My discomfort with the language, though, has led me to be wary of any sort of sit-down meal, so I’ve been trying to avoid them. That first day I grabbed a panino (singular of panini) from a street vendor, and for dinner I went to this take out place which, for those of you from CT, is like a Mystic Market on steroids – it’s basically prepared foods which are heated up for you to take home. According to my guidebook, it’s the place for the Milanese on the go. After discovering that not one of my three languages would help me out with the chef who spoke only Italian and Napolitano, I managed to get a piece of beautiful meat lasagna into a to-go container. While you go pay, the man heats up your food and gift-wraps it, yes, gift-wraps, complete with paper and bow. Unfortunately for me, it was never heated up and cost a total of fourteen euro, not the budget meal I was going for. On my way back to the hotel, I realized I would never make it the whole walk without eating something, so I stopped in a touristy area for some gelato, though I should have known better, and was really disappointed by the quality. It was fortunate that I stopped, however, because on returning to my hotel room I realized that I had no silverware, so I ate my fourteen-euro cold lasagna with a little gelato scoop while Desmond Tutu kept me company on CNN International.

Should you ever find yourself in Europe, I highly recommend that you get up quite early on a Sunday morning and go out for a walk; it’s my favorite time in Granada, and that proved to hold true here in Milan. I had decided to make my way slowly towards the Castle Sforzesco, a 13th century palace which grew and grew (again, with the help of Da Vinci), and played an important role in Milan’s politics over the centuries, especially during the occupations of Spain and France. Today, it’s home to about nine museums, the most interesting of which were the musical instrument museum and the one dedicated to interior furnishings. By far, the best entry there was the automaton of a devil, a moving, life size (can the devil be life size?) figure from the 16th century which was originally a torso from a statue of Christ on the Column, complete with pointy horns, beady red eyes, and a two-foot-long tongue. The caption read “…and by applying a clockwork mechanism, the head and eyes turn, the tongue sticks out, and the beast makes an inarticulate sound.” At three euro, it was the best money I’ve spent so far.

The castle abuts the Parco Sempione, which was really where I began to appreciate the city. It was an unseasonably warm and unusually sunny day in Milan, and only the locals were out and about that early. The very first thing I noticed was the formality of everyone – not in a stuck up, pompous way – but rather how TV commercials for expensive clothing companies like to portray the world. Twenty-somethings were out playing soccer, dads were running behind their little girls on bikes, older couples strolled along with their dogs, and everyone had on ties or flowing scarves, beautiful leather gloves, polished leather shoes and heals, draping coats and capes, even a few parasols. I needn’t mention the kids, who were by far the best-dressed little ones I’ve ever seen, all in little furs and suits and vests. The thing was that, yes, this was a little bit of a fashion show, but that didn’t stop people from enjoying life. These weren’t just church clothes; people were out to play soccer on a Sunday morning, and if they got a little muddy doing so, so be it – at least they looked good. This might come across as somehow superficial or vain, but I didn’t get that impression. These people just always look good! Even the runners I saw had matching track outfits. Bikes are a big deal here, though I didn’t see one made before about 1952. The combination of the curving pathways lined with gnarled trees, ponds, the wedding across the lawn, the beautiful people (and there are scores of them – I’m sure I saw a supermodel or two) rolling along on their antique, basket-fronted bikes made it a great way to start a morning. I had a quiet moment when I happened upon a dad with his two kids standing on a bridge over a quietly babbling stream; the little girl couldn’t have been more than four and the son about two, she in a little white, floor-length coat and he in a suit, the two of them dropping leaves into the water while the dad sang quietly in Italian. The bridge was covered, and I mean I almost couldn’t see the bridge, with locks, locked onto the railings, inscribed with the names of couples. I was a little apprehensive to come back to Europe, home being so comfortable and this being a rather long trip on my own, but I had just forgotten how much I love Europe. I feel that, in many ways, a way of life has been maintained here that we lost somewhere along the way in the US. It’s slower, yes, there’s no instant gratification, your internet might not be connected for two weeks after you call the company, and (thank God), there’s nothing like Walmart, but, to me, life would be the better for it.

I also stopped by La Scala and, because I couldn’t see a show (sold out), I paid four euro to poke around their museum and pop my head into one of the boxes in the main auditorium. Words can’t really describe how beautiful this place is, just not from the outside; originally, it was constructed in a very densely packed area, so the architect didn’t do anything interesting with the outside of the building. That wasn’t a problem until the city tore down houses to make a nice little square in front of the building. I happened to pick the box right next to the triple-sized one reserved for royalty, and could just imagine seeing an opera there, even if I would never have been seated where I was looking in – it would cost somewhere around $2000.

Walking around, I happened upon a museum called La Brera, which is apparently one of the most important in Milan (I had no hope of getting in to see The Last Supper, which requires reservations two weeks in advance). I had no idea how popular it was when I found myself in line for an hour and a half, the only English-speaker in sight. From what I could glean from conversations, there was a travelling Caravaggio exhibit. Little did I know that, after pretending to be an EU citizen from Spain with my green card and paying the reduced rate of 7.50 euro, I would have had to have paid 17 euro and waited in another line to see the exhibit. No thanks. The museum offered an impressive collection of (almost) exclusively religious art; I’ve yet to find a museum which I like half as much as the Met. That night, not able to face another panino, I went into the department store where Armani got his start as a window dresser, Milan’s equivalent of Saks or Barney’s, La Rinascente; I figured they would have some sort of food court. They did, in fact, and one overlooking the top of Il Duomo, the roof being almost as impressive as the rest. I justified eating at the restaurant because I hadn’t paid the money to climb the stairs to the top of the cathedral, and ate my raw tuna salad (not that I knew it was raw when I ordered it, but I had contemplated ordering sushi anyway) and had my glass of wine outside, under a heat lamp, gazing at the Madonnina, the little gilded statue emblematic of Milan on top of the Duomo’s dome. I should have known that it would be way more expensive than I wanted to pay, especially since my waiter provided me with the luxury of about four words of English, but I was happy simply not to have mozzarella.

The next morning, after another serviceable breakfast in my lovely little hotel, I walked over to the train station, which I had located the day before on my run. The rail services in Europe continue to amaze me. I walked in, asked for a ticket to Venice, and was placed on a gorgeous, new train, which left in 15 minutes. So, here I sit, comfortably passing through little towns with those tall, pointy trees that one sees in pictures of Tuscany (not that I’m anywhere near there) on one side, snow-capped mountains on the other, next to a plug for my laptop and coffee service every few minutes. Everything is lovely except for the construction worker covered in asbestos who just plopped himself down next to me, showering my laptop in dust. In another hour, I’ll be in Venice. Thanks for listening – as you might be able to tell, I haven’t talked to anyone in a while.

Casa

I’ve officially left Spain, and am now sitting on an eight-hour Aer Lingus flight with just enough room to open my laptop half-way and bang out my last blog entry until I head back to Europe. Other than the screaming two year-old two rows in front of me who is doing a marvelous job of enraging the young couple with their chairs in my lap who keep are actively attempting to start a family of their own, the flight’s been pretty uneventful.

As you may remember, my friend Steve finished up his work at Oxford about a week before classes ended in Granada, so he paid a quick visit to the south of Spain. The first two days he was with me, the weather was the coldest it’s been in Granada since 1951; I know this, not only because it was in the paper, but also because the three old men waiting with me in the barber shop the other day couldn’t come up with a more interesting topic to discuss. The last day there, though, was marvelous, and after finishing my last exam, we walked around Granada in 60 degree temperatures, up towards the Alhambra, around the palace where the wild peacocks roam, and then out onto the terrace of the Alhambra Palace Hotel, built in the early 1900’s as the place to stay in Granada, for one last café con leche. It’s gone down hill a bit, but the lobby is still stunning, and the views out back overlooking the Mediterranean, the snowcapped Sierra Nevada and the sprawling architecture of the city simply can’t be beat.

Then, of course, it dawned on me that I actually had to leave the city, so I literally ran back to my apartment (stopping by two separate bakeries on the way for Christmas goodies for home) to finish throwing stuff into my suitcases. My señora made us each a bocadillo for the road because she had become so enamored with Steve the two days he was over for lunch, so that bag, in addition to my three suitcases, backpack with dangling running shoes and bagful of assorted footware required me to enlist Steve’s help just to make it to the elevator – and I don’t want comments! Most of my luggage was taken up with presents! After hitting my señora with my running shoes and dropping several bags, we were out on the street. Then it was into the taxi and to my program’s office for the goodbye party. (To be honest, the whole week had been filled with goodbye parties for those of us who weren’t waiting until the last day to leave; I just couldn’t make it to any of them with the exception of the last night, when we all went out and then studied for our EU final with the help of some good Spanish rioja, a very effective European study technique.) We weren’t at the goodbye party two minutes when Steve realized that he had lost his passport at some point on our walk. I was on the phone with several hotels and park management services while Steve contemplated calling his local members of congress – you must realize that this is happening just over an hour before we’re to leave for Barcelona. We decide to go to the airport anyway after a series of rushed goodbyes to everyone in the program and a farewell shot of the Spanish holiday liqueur of choice, anis, where Steve manages to get onto a plane using his military ID and birth certificate, before he finds his passport in his pocket.

We made the most of our night in Barcelona, though paid 20E for a two-minute taxi to the hotel because it was so late. After checking into our hotel, finding the room they had given us in shambles due to construction, re-checking into an upgraded “Elite” suite with the largest bed I’ve ever seen in my life because we managed to charm the check-in girl, we got another taxi and headed over to La Sagrada Familia, the famous church in Barcelona that Steve hadn’t yet seen. It wasn’t lit up (strange…) but it was worth it. After being cursed by a Slavic man, accosted by prostitutes and avoiding beer-sellers on Las Ramblas, we made it to the Hard Rock Café (why, I don’t know), where I paid 13E for a chicken sandwich at around 1:30 in the morning.

And here I am. Our flight was delayed, so at the moment I’m about 4 hours into the 7 hour flight. See you soon.