there's things i remember and things i forget (i miss you, i guess that i should)

A year to the day after I stepped off the plane in Rome Fiumicino and tried to figure out how to buy a train ticket, these are a few of the things I remember about Italy:

1. The glowing pink trees in the Villa Borghese.
2. Carla's "American" accent. "I'm just, like, really glad to be here."
3. The dueling Chinese waiters on Via Cavour. They stood outside their respective restaurants trying to get you to come in and if you went in one restaurant, the other waiter would yell at you.
4. The dandelion that grew on the roof across from our bedroom window in Rome.
5. Heidi in bed in Vernazza with her ear plugs in. "Are you TALKING TO ME? I can't HEAR YOU. I have EAR PLUGS IN."
6. Yvette and I trying to cross the Piazza Santa Maria Maggiore for for the first time. I thought I was going to die.
7. Our weird tour guide at the Priscilla Catacombs. I thought we might die then, too.
8. The woman at the Greek gastronomia who taught us the names of the fruits in Italian, and the other woman who gave us pieces of chocolate when we couldn't pay for our yogurt.
9. Running to the National Museum of Rome with Brie while being pelted with hail.
10. Brie's gelato obsession.
11. Maria's shower breaking and not draining and making the entire apartment smell like something had died.
12. "I went to Georgetown. Maybe you've heard of it."
13. The bottle of wine my Pakistani internet cafe friend bought for me my last day in Rome.
14. Brie's top five: identifying scents, predicting waves, opening things, catching, and throwing.
15. "Con calma, con calma."
16. The pizza at the GranCaffe Strega (aka Santa Monica Pier,) and how when I first saw it, I thought, "There's no way I can eat this whole pizza."
17. Carla showing us how to get free drinks at the Irish pub on Via Nazionale.
18. The time I accidentally kicked a dog and got screamed at by an old Italian lady.
19. Yvette offering me food to pacify me.
20. How miserable Brie and I were for a couple of weeks back in Rome. I was working on an arbitration non-stop on Carla's laptop, and Brie had some mysterious wasting illness.
21. The guy at the gelateria near our apartment who always asked me to come out dancing.
22. Wearing two sweaters to bed in Rome.
23. Playing the movie game with Coma and Steve at that cafe in Trastevere where they gave us free beans, which we then felt obligated to eat.
24. "I think of yes."
25. How Vernazza was so quiet and small that it was news that we were there. One of the waiters there told Heidi he had heard that there were four American girls in town.
26. The waiter at the pizza place on Quattro Fontane: "I can't believe my eyes! You are full of magic!"
27. Choking on the word margherita, repeatedly.
28. The duck rape.
29. Going grocery shopping in the store across the piazza and keeping the fairly disgusting tuna kit I bought on the shelves above Yvette's bed.
30. Talking to Adam on my cell between cars of the train on our way back to Rome.
31. Crik crok sour cream potato chips.
32. "Oh, Meeshell, that is not a word!"
33. Walking down to Termini station with Carla to get noodles.
34. Brie journaling everywhere.
35. The lemon-scented rainy streets of Sorrento.
36. Reading "Harry Potter e il Principe Mezzosangue" on the train with the Italian guy reading over my shoulder.
37. "Piano, piano."
38. Going to church with Brie. There was a man there who kept staring at us during the sermon. One of the women in the church was trying to warn us about him, but said he was "non pericoloso." After church, we were walking back to the train station and he stepped out from behind a bus to say hello to us. We realized that he must have run diagonally across the field to be able to get in front of us.
39. Mamertinum, traditionally held to be the cell in which Paul and Peter were held.
40. Touring churches with Brie, and then more by myself after she left.
41. Fried zucchini flowers.
42. The Jewish ghetto and Bernini's turtle fountain.
43. Watching Walker Texas Ranger dubbed in Italian on the little TV in our bedroom.
44. "Gucci, prada."
45. Birds circling the domes near the Roman Forum.
46. The noisemakers sold in the piazzas.
47. Rain in the gutters in Pompeii.
48. The "passagiatta" in Florence.
49. The sound of the sea at the train station in Monterosso.
50. The feel of the sun on my face as I lay in the grass in the Villa Borghese on my last day in Rome.

david gives us another chance

I am home now (yea!) but not caught up to real time on the blog yet, so I'll do a few more posts to finish up...

After Yvette left Venice, we headed to Rome, but decided to first give ourselves one more chance to see Renaissance art in the birthplace of the Renaissance, so we stopped in Florence for a night. The place we had stayed before was all booked up, so we found another place on the same street near the Central Market. As we were being let into the building, a big group of drunk guys came up on the street, singing "You've Lost That Loving Feeling" to us. Later, after we left to go out, they sort of reappeared and we tried to walk fast and take weird turns to lose them. It was a little odd, especially since it was still daylight out, and I kind of felt like we were inside some weird pushy drunk guy videogame.

We walked around Florence that evening, looking for some magical gelato place that Yvette had taken Heidi during their day in the city. We wandered around, trying some different areas, and finally found it, a little place on a funny little street in Santa Croce called Vivoli. And it was the most amazing gelato I ever had. It didn't even seem like gelato, it seemed like a different food group. It was so good that I wanted to go back immediately, and I saw everything else in Florence through a sort of post-gelato haze. That night we found a cute little mom and pop trattoria so that Heidi could have her cute little mom and pop trattoria fix. It was good. No Vivoli, but good.

The next day we were very productive. I had made early reservations at the Uffizi Gallery, so we got up and got ready and headed down there, picked up our tickets, had some coffee and pastries, and took a tour of the Gallery, which is basically a collection of all the significant Italian painters. I did the audio tour, which was interesting and helpful, although it did make me trail several rooms behind Heidi and Brie.

After Uffizi, we kind of wanted to go to Mario's again, but I had made 12:30 reservations at the David, and we were starving, so we just stopped for some panini and sat on the steps of the Duomo to eat them. A gypsy woman came up to us (which basically happens any time you sit down outside in Italy) to ask for money. She really liked the look of Brie's stuffed pizza sandwich, and stared at Brie and mimed eating until Brie split it with her.

After that we went to the Accademia, which houses both the David and Michelangelo's unfinished Prisoners from his unfinished Tomb of Pope Julius II. I was really interested in these, especially because they were unfinished and so they give you a glimpse into his techniques. Michelangelo supposedly said, "I saw angel in the marble and I carved until I set him free." That seems really true of the Prisoners, who look like humans caught in stone, trying to pull themselves away. I was so caught up in the sculptures that I didn't even notice for quite a while what should have been obvious from the minute I walked into the hall: the beatifully lit, coolly perfect, 17 feet tall statue of David.

The David, moreso than anything else that I saw in Italy, defies both description and photographs. It's such a familiar image that you think you know what it looks like. (There's a house a few blocks from me on 3rd that has about 18 replicas of The David on its front lawn... at Christmastime they put Santa hats on all of them.) But seeing it in the hall literally stops your breath for a moment. It's simply the most beautiful, perfect sculpture I've ever seen. It was considered a "badly blocked out" piece of marble by the Florence Signoria, but 26-year-old Michelangelo still had to fight to get the commission, and then carved the sculpture that would become the symbol for the city. We stared at it for a long time, walking around to see it from different angles, and then gave a cursory glance to the other art in the Accademia and left.

After that we had a couple of hours before we wanted to leave. I wanted to see the Medici chapels but they were closed that day. We ended up walking around San Lorenzo market. I bought an overdue Christmas present for Micky and a leather jacket for myself... I think I bargained pretty well. The guy who sold me the jacket told me if I could stay for the evening and go out with him he would have a surprise for me... as intriguing as that sounded, I had to pass. Brie and Heidi did their best to support the Tuscan leather industry as well and bought bags.

Without visiting Vivoli again, which saddened me greatly, we packed our ever-increasing number of bags and caught the train to Rome.

a kiss is just a kiss (the girl's guide to bartering in italy)

Our multiple trains to Venice (from Vernazza to La Spezia back to Florence to Venice) were somewhat complicated but uneventful. After our night in Termini the trains would never seem so bad again. I'm pretty sure we were starving the whole time but it didn't matter. This is me and Brie taking a nap. Part of the time I was sleeping directly on my folded-up glasses, so I had a really charming indentation across my cheek for like a day. It looked like I had gotten slashed in a bar fight.

We arrived in Venice when the sun was about to set, and our first view of the city leaving the train station was amazing. The light was really delicate, the sky just starting to turn pink, and there was a canal of beautiful blue water with boats zipping along. It seemed, and I used this word so many times in Venice, surreal.

Originally I wanted to take a water taxi, because the thought of the vaporetti, or water buses, was kind of intimidating. But the price they gave us was higher than I thought it should be so we decided to just try the bus. It ended up being a beautiful ride. The train station is at one end of Venice, and our place, near San Marco, was down the winding Grand Canal, so we got a full tour of Venice as we rode. It was really incredible. The sun was setting during the ride, so by the time we got to the dock near our bed and breakfast, it was night. The picture at right, of the church in the moonlight, is from the talented Yvette, as well as the two at the top. Sometimes she does take non-slanty pictures.

We got to the shore and managed to find our way through the little alleys to our place, which was another cool little personal apartment turned B&B. Riccardo, the very perky owner, showed us around and recommended a place for dinner, which we ignored, choosing instead to go to a weird little restaurant with flourescent lighting and a lot of fried foods. It was the only recommendation from the good book on the entire trip that we didn't really like. The waiter was Venetian, and had their particular accent, which is extremely clipped and kind of monotone. He sounded like an Italian android. After that we wandered around a bit, got some gelato, and headed back. One of us, I won't mention who, had basically been awake for a month at this point and needed her beauty sleep.

In the morning we got up and had breakfast, which Riccardo had prepared, and which included rolls with butter. I was so excited, I was just saying the day before that I missed butter. When we were all up and at the table, Riccardo came in to clean or something, and looked at Heidi and said, "WHOA, what happened to you?" Which you would think would be slightly offensive, but Heidi just took it in stride, and Riccardo fell in love to the depths of his little Venetian heart. (Brie and Yvette, I really apologize for this picture, I know I'm not in it and everything, but it was necessary for the story.)

After that we got ready and figured out the water bus situation and went to il cimitero San Michele, the Venetian island cemetery. In the late 1700s Napoleon's people declared that the Venetians could no longer bury their dead in the city center. (I'm not even exactly sure how or where they did this.) So they built this floating island cemetery. I have a thing for cemeteries so I was pretty excited about this one, although I didn't know it was walled all the way around. I had hoped that we would have a view of the water behind the headstones. Near the entrance we saw a film shoot with monks and men in knickers running around. I was jealous. The whole cemetery was filled with a kind of smoky haze, which we finally realized was due to pollen from the cypress trees. On the right is a row of crosses for Italian soldiers, some killed in World War I.

After a bit of confusion, and several vaporetti, we headed back to San Marco, where we had lunch at a place with a pushy host. "For you, no cover charge. If you come in right now. If you wait, I can't promise anything." Whereas in other places it wasn't too difficult to get away from tourists and touristy restaurants, Venice was full of them.

After lunch we split up, Yvette and Brie heading off to get lost and Heidi and I to the Peggy Guggenheim Museum, where my friend Maggie interned for a year. We did see all the interns standing around, leaning, as they are allowed to do, and not sitting, as they are not allowed to do. (I remember Maggie telling me this.) The collection included Magritte's Empire of Light, which was fun. Heidi's Italy journal had this painting on the cover. I was struck by the space itself. It was Peggy Guggenheim's former home, so I expected it to seem like paintings in a home. Instead it seemed, from the space and from the pictures from that period, that she lived in a museum.

On the way to and from the museum we took a traghetto, which made me feel very local. It's like a gondola ride, only it's just across the Grand Canal, and no one sings to you, and it's fifty cents instead of ninety euros. They're necessary because there are few bridges and a waterbus just to cross the canal can be impractical. On our way back, the gondolier... the traghetier, I guess... leaned down to Heidi as we were leaving and said, "Hello..." in this low voice. The guy across from us laughed and said, "Oh, the old 'hello' trick."

After our little tour we went to meet Yvette and Brie, but they had gotten lost and were a bit late, so we went into Harry's American Bar (we weren't being cheesy, apparently this is a famous Venetian bar and you're supposed to go there when you're in Venice) and had Bellinis (named after a Venetian painter, and made from... I think... champagne and grapefruit juice) which were overpriced but delicious.

Then we met Yvette and Brie. I didn't feel like we had seen enough of Venice yet but when someone said maybe we should go rest before dinner, it seemed like a great idea to us all. We came back, rested a little and then went back out for dinner. Heidi picked a place from the good book but we couldn't find it, so we ended up going to a place that was in a little piazza near our hotel. I'm not sure what the others thought of it, but I had really amazing gnocchi, baked with mozzerella and onions. I don't know why I keep describing my food. I think I'm hungry. Yvette and I balanced our books with our handy dandy little notebooks. We were very proud of ourselves.

After dinner I'm pretty sure we got some gelato, walked around, and headed back fairly early. It was Yvette's last night in Italy, she would leave early the next morning and fly home, business class. Lucky. In honor of Snow Pea, this is a showcase of some of her lovely Venice photographs:


And one of the four of us. I know the background isn't very interesting, ok? I had to set my camera on a bridge and hope it didn't fall into a canal. You want interesting pictures, you come to Venice and take some pictures of me so I don't have to use the self-timer function on a bridge. Around this time we had to keep taking random pictures of ourselves near canals because this weird guy was following us, and we thought that by stopping to take pictures he would walk past, but he didn't, he just stood there and watched us and made comments and offered to take the picture for us. Finally we lost him by wandering into a weird little alley where we kind of thought he would trap us and kill us.

We had free internet at the B&B, which was nice, because I had gotten so far behind on this thing, and when we got back I tried to catch up a little and Heidi slept and Yvette and Brie talked. And then the next morning... Snow Pea was gone, the first of my merry band to desert me. The next morning we got up and had breakfast and Riccardo put the moves on Heidi, who did manage to get us ten euros off the room through unknown means. (Later, our roommate in Rome would get a plumber to come fix the shower drain in exchange for a kiss. Had I known this was official currency in Italy, I would have taken a much cheaper trip.)

me, i call it "one land"

We arrived in Florence about 8:30. Yvette had called while we were on the train and was relieved to learn that we hadn’t actually had an inordinate amount of fun the night before without her. Heidi, bless her six days without sleep heart, was raring to go, so Yvette took her on a tour. This is a picture from Heidi and Yvette’s day in Florence:


This is a picture of Brie’s and my day in Florence:


They came back in the mid-afternoon and we got all of our stuff together (it was mostly already packed by Snow Pea) and left for Cinque Terre.

Cinque Terre means “Five Lands” in Italian, and it’s five towns along the coast, linked by the train and a hiking trail. We took a train to Monterosso, the first of the five towns, and then a local train to Vernazza, where we were staying. We were so happy to be safely in Monterosso, leaning over the balcony at the train station and listening to the sea and eating bruschettini from the vending machine. This is frozen Brie, who liked to pretend we were vacationing in July, wearing a T-shirt and a scarf at the station.

At the Vernazza station, I asked for a map of the town so I could find where we were staying. The guy just kind of looked at me blankly. Once we headed into town, I could see why. The town was basically a street. It was like asking for a map of Upland.

And also, it was completely dead. I knew it was a more of a summer location, but I don’t think we saw a soul after we left the train station, and all the doors and windows were closed. We stopped halfway down the street because I noticed the name “Rosa” on one of the apartment doorbells we passed, and then I heard, “Michelle?” floating down from somewhere. I just had to call out “Sì” since I didn’t know where the voice was coming from. And then we looked up, and a woman was leaning out a window four stories above us.

Rosa welcomed us and led us up the four flights to get settled into our little apartment (complete with a little kitchen… now from Rome I am so jealous of our Cinque Terre selves with a kitchen). And then we decided to head out and see the nightlife… meaning find anything with food that was open. I don’t even know if I had eaten yet that day.

We walked down to the beautiful picturesque harbor and found, to my joy, a restaurant that was open. We went in and had fantastic salads and pasta. My pasta was penne and prawns, and even though it skeeved me out a little to have the little shrimp faces staring at me and Yvette had to show me how to eat them, it was the best thing I ate in Italy.

The next morning we got up and had breakfast at the Blue Marlin Bar, which I was excited about because they had eggs made in the American style, and Heidi was excited about because they had a waiter made in the underwear model style. Unfortunately, the underwear model style waiter told us, the grill wasn’t working and I couldn’t have my eggs, but we should come back that night and maybe Heidi could have the waiter. Or some paraphrase of the above.

After breakfast we were supposed to go on a hike through the five towns, one of the highlights of seeing Cinque Terre, but it was getting kind of drizzly and I was just having a rough day, for various reasons that have nothing to do with our story, and wasn’t up for it. Really I should have a guest blogger at this point, but I will just try to satisfy your insatiable Cinque Terre curiosity by showing you some pictures from the others, who hiked from Vernazza to Monterosso, or vice versa, or something.

This is a view of Vernazza from the trail:


This is Yvette having nightmarish flashbacks to the steps of St. Peter’s:


This is Heidi, wearing the famous "pantalones":


When they got back I wanted to walk up and look for this bakery that was supposed to have a sweet ricotta pastry called panzerotta, so Brie went with me. I was disappointed because the bakery was closed, but we did find a little trail that led up to a cemetery above town. I brought my camera with me but left the camera card in the room, so I don’t have any photographs, which is too bad, because it was really lovely. The cemetery was on a cliff overlooking the waves crashing against the harbor below. Brie and I pondered beauty and mortality and panzerotta.

After we got back we got ready and I hinted really subtly that it would be just really great if we could go to the same restaurant again that night so I could order the exact same thing. And I did, and it was wonderful again, although the waitress kept giving us the evil eye for an unknown reason. Perhaps she thought it was lame to get penne and prawns two nights in a row.

After that, we stopped at the Blue Marlin, but the underwear model was strangely not in attendance. No matter, Heidi soon drew the attention of the other cute Italian waiter. He made plans to meet us after. Due to my aforementioned blue funk, I decided to just write off my Vernazza experience as a loss (except for the prawns) and go back, but the others met the guy, Guiliano, at the harbor.

And here’s where I really, really should have a guest blogger, but you’ll just have to ask the ragazze what happened yourself.

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.