Maybe just the Vatican today

St Peter's Church is huge, enormous, gigantical. In this picture we are on top of the Vittoriano on the far-ish side of the old city, and that's St. Peter's dome in the middle, across the river. ("Across the river" always seems a huge distance to me, no matter how big the river or how far away it is. Anyways, here it is a bit over a mile away.) You can see the dome almost all over town, it seemed.

Here we are just on the other side of the river at the Castel Sant'Angelo. This picture is a bit extraordinary because the sky was not heavy and grey! And because Arthur seems to have matured into the kind of guy who can have his picture taken without sticking his tongue out.

We dashed over to the Piazza San Pietro Wednesday night to see the new pope, and then returned Thursday morning. The only camera we had here Wednesday was Arthur's Flip video camera, which has not yet been attached to a computer for downloading. How slack we are... One day, we'll see if he got anything other than people's heads on camera. 

So, very huge. If you look closely you can see the lineup of wee little folk just along the front, waiting to go in. We're about as tall as the base of the columns. 

Dead centre is the famed chimney on the Sistine Chapel

TV crew headquarters, just outside the Piazza

Stephen became a big fan of obelisks. He will tell you how many there are (certainly we saw about eight, I think, not counting columns and other tall, thin things), who brought them from Egypt when, which ones were broken and then reassembled, which ones have hieroglyphs on... So I include this one for him. A quick internet search tells me that the thingy at the top contains a fragment of the true cross! How could we have missed that, hmm?

I have been in the Vatican four times in my life. The first time I was almost 6 and apparently was fascinated by a devil ferrying souls across the river in the Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel. I bet it was about the only thing I could see, being little and all! I had a postcard of the whole wall for a long time -- and who would throw it out; it's probably in a box in the basement! 

When I went in 1989 with a friend, we went through the museum, but I don't remember stopping in the church at all. And I'm sure we didn't climb the dome! 

I did go in the church in 1984 with Stephen -- on the trip we dubbed "Great Scaffoldings of Europe" because everything was under wraps that year! Then we both sort of thought it was all ostentatious and gilded and think how many homes for the poor one could have built, etc etc. 

This time I thought, "Wow, people built this!" Of course a pope or two had a grandiose idea and it's a bit over the top and people probably bought indulgences and paid for chapels to be built because they thought they'd get a better seat in the big theatre of heaven and it doesn't serve a purpose that I really care about, but it must have employed thousands of skilled (very skilled) and unskilled workers for years and years, and they did create some beautiful things for us all to admire. So just enjoy and don't think too much about other legacies of the church... for the moment...

inside the main dome

Three of us just walking around

The Pieta behind glass. It really is lovely

Now this required a smattering of Latin and a bit of understanding of British royal history. Someone was taking a picture of the shapely bottom of the angel on this monument, and I realized it was for James III of Great Britain. Who? It turns out that the Catholic son of James II ended up in Rome, since no one really wanted him in Britain, and he and his two sons are buried in the church. They got a very lovely monument made by Canova, and we got a bit of a puzzle as we walked past!

Papal caution tape!

Of course, we climbed the dome. I believe there are 551 steps. Only wusses take the elevator (which only saves you about half the steps), or so I was told, as we all set off to climb. There are sort of open ramps, really tight never-ending marble spirals, and the creepiest of all, the slightly tilted, very narrow space when you are walking between the outside of the dome and the layer of mosaics seen on the inside. Finally one emerges and the whole city is spread beneath you.

Awesome, right?

I think this is the last of the churchy pictures, though I still have tons of ruins. I just have to add a few pictures here from the Basilica of Santo Stefano Rotondo. This doesn't mean that St Stephen was a bit pudgy, but that the church is round. The church is very old, but its main claim to fame is the series of large paintings all around the walls showing the various ways people were martyred. Click through to that link to see what Charles Dickens had to say!

boiling in oil

This lovely lady is having her neck pierced

more cooking

This guy is getting chopped into bits

It really makes you want to join in, doesn't it? Imagine getting married or taking your kids to this church! 

Millions of stone floors

You know I love a good floor! Medieval tiles, mosaics, the floor of the Louvre which I've been meaning to knit into a blanket for many years, cobbles, marble, wood!

I have here about a gazillion pictures. I'll try to be quick, though!

Nice, orderly cobbles in any old street

Cobbles with grout and moss

The Pantheon is an ancient Roman building, and I'm told the floor is original. People have been walking on this for two thousand years, so in some places it's a tad worse for wear.

They roped off the centre bit because it was raining, and of course the Pantheon is the one with the big hole in the middle of the ceiling! There are discreet drain holes right under the oculus. We saw another floor that had been excavated in the Forum that had the same sort of large pattern of coloured marbles.

These next two are Roman mosaics from the Capitoline Museum. I think Kaffe Fassett may have used both of these for inspiration. Those blocks in the middle look a bit like this, and I'm sure I've seen them elsewhere.

This one certainly is very like his Mosaic waistcoat. Védís Jónsdóttir has a pattern called Ravenna, which is also very similar. The colours in both these are amazingly bright, and the work is simply mind-boggling. 

We didn't go to as many churches as one could! We missed tons, big and small, full of art and surprises and lovely floors. We did go to Santa Maria in Aracoeli which is next to the big ol' Vittoriano monument -- which I may just show you another day. We also stopped in at San Giovanni di Laterano, the church where the Pope sits as bishop of Rome. It's big and old and I think these two memorials are in it. Of course, Santa Maria in Aracoeli is also old.

These are both on the floor, and have been for centuries. This poor old guy has blended wonderfully into the floor! Sic transit gloria mundi, etc.

The floor patterns in the two churches were also a bit similar. I think it's safe to say the more "sophisticated" looking ones are from San Giovanni and the more freestyle ones from Santa Maria. I have just learned that this style of floor is called "cosmatesque." So, there, now we all know.

bit of a jog here!

A huge expanse, outlined with these little quilt-pattern stones! Squares, triangles, half-circles and more.

This is great and simple and pretty regular.

Add colour for more fantasticness!

Each square is about 2-3 inches on a side. Glorious!

Was this where they used up scraps? 

Different edgings, great corner circle

Swirls around the drain. Very sophisticated work

Oh, it just goes on and on! 

Tiny work and big work 

Simple yet elegant!

These last ones are from St Peter's at the Vatican. I'll show you more of the church later, but thought I'd put the floors in here. It is all on such a huge scale that it is hard to get a good picture. I need an aerial view!

Curlicues, fancy!

Lots of colour!

This sort of thing is just plain showing off. That is stone! How does it fit together so perfectly?

And that is most of my pictures of inspiring floors. I have a few more mosaics up my sleeve. And the Vatican and the Colosseum and other great Roman concrete-and-brick constructions.

But you know, we didn't take a single picture of anyone eating gelato!

Wandering around Rome

(Yes, I published this at 7 am. My body is still on Roman time!)

We spent more than a week in Rome, and took a ton of pictures. Some are of kids making faces and some are duplicates because we took a picture of the same cool building each time we passed it by and some are not very good (yes, it's true). Still, that is too many pictures to deal with at one go!

We had two cameras, and Stephen took way more pictures than I did. After a while, I just assumed he would take the big shots, the "here is the Colosseum" shots, and I just did my floors and little things. But now, do I want to go through twice as many pictures to show you his masterpieces as well? I looked through the ones from my camera and flagged over 50 -- too many to show you anyways, and you've all seen those iconic Rome shots, right?

Let's see what happens if I assemble a few of my favourites. I will make them all "medium," but you can always click for bigger.

We stayed at Via Giulia, 89. You may remember that last fall I pointed you to a series of photos on Flickr of huge and major renovations of a building at #93, which of course was practically next door. (Travel tip: the numbers start at one end of the street, go 1, 2, 3, 4 up one side of the street to the other end. Then they go down the other side, 78, 79, 80... I am not sure if this is true on very long streets, but it was certainly true on the Via Giulia.) 

Via Giulia, 93

Oh, I feel this getting very long.

Via Giulia is quite a special street in Rome. It was mostly built by Pope Julius II in the 16th century, but obviously, a homeowner must update things every hundred years or so. There were cables and telephone wires outside, and who knows what the other inner courtyards looked like, but I think mostly the facades were very old-looking and the interiors were totally modern within the old structures. When they did #93, they took everything out and rebuilt with all modern methods and made a pretty high-end hotel. In our place, there were walls a foot thick in places, holding the building up! There was also a metal beam across the living room, holding it together back-to-front.

Our living room floor

Bedroom floor

New technology means new holes in the walls, and this is the building across the side street from our bedroom window. You can see they had to bash holes for vents for water heaters or dryers. (Another travel tip: if you have "washer in the courtyard," you likely don't have a dryer, and so you hang your clothes out to dry, and then it rains for two days. Ask me how I know.)

beautiful old wall, new holes

We noticed several things on our walkabouts. The cars are all very small. Smart cars seem to be pulling ahead of the Fiat 500, and of course, there are also older cars. We saw several original Minis, and this tiny Fiat.

People were careful with their graffitti! There were doors that were totally spray-painted up, and some clever wag altered this street sign below, but the nice smooth house walls were mostly clear.

This poster was put on a metal hatch in the wall. I think it's well designed and clever (if a tad negative) which we don't often see in our throwaway posters in Toronto.

Some street scenes next. I cannot tell you just where this is, but I believe it's near the church of San Clemente. We got to the church just as they were closing for the afternoon, so didn't get inside. We just wandered around and had lunch.

This is just opposite San Giovanni in Laterano. You will see more of the church another day; it has the most marvellous floors! But here, a bit of an aqueduct with houses built around it! I would love to see inside that central house there. Is there a giant Roman brick construction in the bedroom? Something must still be supporting the whole structure!

This is a building on the little island in the Tiber. I think it might be a hospital, but I just liked the colours and shapes!

This picture was taken on the footbridge near our apartment. At first glance this is amazing, but we soon saw these guys and their confreres all over town. Every once in a while another two guys would come along and they'd all disappear under a big black tent, a bit of wriggling and squirming, the tent would come off and the other two guys would take over for the next hour or so. The bottom fellow appears to be holding the post, but there is a structure going up his sleeve and, indeed, underneath him. I think we tossed a euro in their pot, just for their sheer cleverness.

This is the bridge from up on the Castel Sant'Angelo. Maybe you can see their orange robes on the left side of the bridge.

There is also a guy in an Incan outfit playing pan pipes, another drumming on pots, plastic water containers, anything! (Now, Stephen has pictures of him... should dig one out!)

And there's always a bunch of tourists with those euros jingling in their pockets. There are people selling "designer" purses and whenever it rained men emerged from out of nowhere with armloads of umbrellas. Another item constantly on offer was the Splat Ball. The guys would throw the ball down onto a piece of wood or plastic; it flattens right out like a puddle, and then reforms itself. We didn't succumb, having too much experience with things like sticky hands you throw at a wall or window -- until it gets a bit dusty and doesn't work any more. I might be tempted by a fake Prada bag, but I'm no dummy! (Only tempted a bit; I didn't succumb to that, either.)

I'll stop for today with a couple of pizza pictures. The food was certainly something we were all looking forward to, and except for one crappy sandwich from a truck near the Forum, it was all pretty darn good.

This pizza was called Buffala, because of the cheese, I imagine. The crust was baked with just a bit of oil, I think, and then cherry tomatoes, real mozzarella di buffala and arugula were thrown on top. Very good! Arugula was everywhere, as were artichokes. Mmmmm.

When we couldn't get into San Clemente, we found ourselves in a little restaurant where Arthur ordered pizza with "patates." He had previously had a pizza with egg on, and we had all expected the raw egg to be broken onto the pizza and then baked, but in fact he was presented with a hard-boiled egg cut in half, perched on top of the crust! When he ordered this, we all joked about whether the potatoes would be mashed or baked. Um, no. French fries!

Next up, perhaps some floors!

Home again

47 years later

We went, we conquered and we came back.

On the plane home yesterday, I was composing fiery epistles about our travel: we got stuck behind the lines of the Rome Marathon, then dealt with late planes and iffy connections, but I have calmed down a bit.

Mainly I felt stupid for not realizing the whole old city was surrounded by yellow tape and runners. We should have ducked down out of the city via the Metro, or walked and even just ducked under the tape at the end of our street, from the outset, rather than not checking the map  -- surely no-one would encircle a city in yellow tape? We also falsely assumed a cab driver would know what to do (though ultimately, the only thing for us to do was get out of the cab, run with our luggage across the stream of marathoners, and pick up another cab on the other side).

But as I say, I'm over it now. Really.

Give me a day or two to sort the millions of pictures. We saw ancient stuff, renaissance stuff, church stuff and city stuff, and oh, the floors! Tiny stone mosaics, big slabs of coloured marble, and everything in between. Stay tuned!

Habemus Papam

We were just about to set off for dinner last night, but decided to check the papal smoke signals. Big excitement: white smoke! Do we stay and watch things online, or go for dinner and come back when he's actually made his way to the balcony?

As soon as we got out the door, however, we realised the thing to do was to go across the river with everyone else to the Piazza San Pietro to see in real life! There were traffic cops keeping all the cars on the non-Vatican side of the river, who had apparently immediately swung into action. No Italian lack of efficiency there!

We got to the piazza and were just outside the "arms." There was much standing around, dodging umbrellas (until people figured out it wasn't really raining after all) and finally someone appeared on the balcony.

The building is enormous! The piazza is enormous! We were so far away that the people on the balcony were tiny specks. And since our comprehension of Italian is minimal, and the crowd was murmuring and the sound was echoing, we didn't understand much, but heard "termini de mundo" or some such thing... Apparently he was saying they'd gone to the ends of the earth to find a pope, but we just got "end of the world"! The Lord's Prayer is recognizable by those of us of a certain age, in any language, and when everyone around us was crossing themselves, we knew something important was going on.

And finally, having experienced our historical moment, at about 9:30, we got to a restaurant for dinner.

Checking in

Good morning, Roma!

I've taken a million pictures, but we're not really very high tech here, and I'll leave posting any till I get back to my home and desk and big computer with all its cables and so on.

We've been here a few days and are getting into the swing of things. We are staying in the Centro Storico (historical centre!) and walk everywhere. One bus ride in 5 days. The big trouble is getting back to our apartment exhausted at 5 pm or so, and not getting dinner till 8 or 9. It seems like we should crash, eat, sleep, but we have to crash, re-energize, go out to find food, walk home some scenic route, and then sleep.

We've discovered the grocery store and we have cooked a few dinners, but if one wants to stroll around the Piazza Navona in the evening, one must, indeed, go out in the evening.

Today, the Galleria Borghese!

Must have travel knitting

This week we are setting off for Roma! The eternal city and all that!

Me in Rome in 1965

We are unsure how those cardinals are going to mess up our tour of the Sistine Chapel, and of course, equally unsure if we'll be passing by the Piazza San Pietro when the smoke signals appear, which would be quite exciting to see. But, even if things get very troublesome there, there are lots of other things to look at in Rome.

I have been fussing about what to wear, since it is about 15 degrees C there, and freezing here. But mainly I have been fussing about travel knitting. I wrecked my elbow knitting excessively during the Olympics last summer, and it's not perfect yet. I have exercises I do (not obsessively) and a brace thingy to wear, and I pay attention to when it hurts. But, oh, the temptation to just keep knitting is quite strong! And indeed, that is what got me into this trouble in the first place.

I did knit a few rows on a sock a while back, but that's a bit fussy and small and I thought something on bigger needles would be better. So I started a crazy thing with Rowan Cotton Tape and 9 or 10 mm needles. It is quite fine, but I'm wondering who will ever wear a purple and pink cotton cowl/skirt/beach cover-up. Or whatever it turns into. So, the motivation is not really there.

Now, I am leaving on a jet plane.... and simply can't imagine setting off without a travel project.

I have acquired several balls of Rowan Handknit Cotton over the years. There are lots of things I could do with it, I suppose, but I don't really have enough for a sweater for myself, and since this is travel knitting I'm looking for now, it's got to be simple! I looked at shawl patterns, and finally settled on Colonnade, originally knit in Manos, a big, soft, fat wool! I have 2 balls of pale green, a couple of different blues, a scrap of a brick/salmon pinkish colour, and 8 balls of very dark navy. My shawl will look completely different from the original, but I will keep the stocking stitch top part and the colonnade-like bottom bit, just with a whole new set of numbers. I should have cast on more to start, but figure a shawl is the ultimate in one-size-fits-all.

Stay tuned, and in a few short weeks I'll show you how it went.