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.

I was away and now I'm back

A couple of friends and I took off for Montreal for a few days. It was a ton of fun, and although we did a lot of slogging through slush and muck and biting wind-blown snow, we enjoyed ourselves. My pictures are rather uneven: I have no pictures of our train ride or dinners, for example, nor of the Christian Dior jacket Patricia bought. I'll see what I can do here.

We took the train, which involved getting up at the crack of dawn and getting the first subway train to Union Station. The trip was uneventful. Much snowy wasteland out the window.

We all, being responsible middle-aged women, brought food, so we had apples and clementines and cheese and bread and crackers and raisins and nuts and muffins. I may have forgotten something, but you get the idea! (Oh, yes, there were three avocados, as well.)

We needed a hotel room with three beds, and ended up with a family room at the Square Phillips, a building that was once, I believe, a garment factory. The room was rather spectacularly huge!

Our hotel kitchen, photo by Katie

I now think I must take my family there, since it would be perfect for us all. We were able to drop off our bags and put our remaining cheese in the fridge before setting off for the Musee des Beaux Arts.

The permanent collections are open for free, which is refreshing after Toronto's rather pricey museum and art gallery. There was a collection of Napoleon-related stuff, like his hat, portraits, jewellery, a bust of him looking like a Roman emperor -- his tableware from St Helena, even!

He sure knew how to sit for a portrait

There was also a lot of European painting, which made me realise it is great in small doses, but we are going to have to be careful not to burn out on it in Rome (our next family adventure, in a couple of weeks). Especially the religious art has to be kept to a minimum, because all those suffering saints get to be too much pretty quickly, I find. Give me some swirling petticoats and golden leaves any day, though.

Dido's swirling drapery 

I know nothing about this one, but I like it

Perhaps my favourite part was the decorative arts section. So much craziness. When people try to make an interesting chair, who knows what will happen! There were great lamps and tables and teapots -- I could spend an age in there!

Is it comfy to sit in an apple?

A view from the window of the gallery shows the weather we were dealing with! Eeuw. My friend Katie even had to buy new boots to manage. With those new boots, she boldly strode through puddles I was tiptoeing around, lemme tell you.

Thursday was spent shopping. We had the address of a Salvation Army thrift shop, and knew it was sort of at one end of what they call Antiques Alley. We trudged off and managed to find a couple of other vintage clothing shops, some really expensive antiques shops and a couple of vintage junk stores, with things from our childhood offered up at rather high prices.

We stuck to clothing and accessories. I made yet another attempt at finding the Perfect Bag. We shall see, but it's a cute purse/backpack which might just be The One. And a few shirts, and things for the kids. I passed up a lovely apple-shaped sugar bowl for $55, and also declined to buy a nice Anne Klein jacket which fit me fine, but had epaulettes which looked funny. One friend was moderate in her purchases and the other was slightly immoderate, but like I said, she did score a very nice jacket.

We returned to the hotel with our bags of swag, had a moderate dinner of avocado and cheese and bread and nuts and headed off to see Chris Potter at the Gésu Centre. We'd asked our pal JD to give us a pro tip about what to see, and this is where he sent us. I, at least, was going in pretty blind, having seen little live jazz. It turned out to be pretty darn good! YouTube and Blogger don't always interact too well -- it's hard to make the video fit on my page, I find -- so I will just send you to here perhaps, or here. The audience was extremely enthusiastic, and we had very good seats in a venue where it seemed there could hardly have been a "bad" seat. A great call, JD.

Afterwards, of course, a drinky poo in a swanky hotel bar.

Too bad I don't like maraschino cherries

Next day we checked out, left our bags (now completely stuffed with our purchases, and we still had cheese and apples) and went off in search of the Papeterie Nota Bene*.

It was a fab shop! I seem to have felt a need for notebooks. I gave one to each kid and one to Stephen, and have two left for my own musings and immortal scribblings.

A bit more tramping around, this time up Boulevard St Laurent, home to smoked meat and more vintage stuff. Having stuffed our bags already, and then acquired more treasures at Nota Bene, we were just looking. And I believe we all succeeded in restraining ourselves, despite the temptations of, for example, a leopard-spotted faux fur scarf lined with fleece. It would have been delightful, but I was strong.

Finally, we bought some sandwiches for the train, gathered our bags and choo-choo'd back through the night to Toronto. (I still brought home three apples and an avocado!)

It's snowing

There's a lot of snow here today. It started yesterday afternoon and hasn't stopped.

The kids were a bit sad that school was not cancelled.

No barbecue tonight, I'm afraid.