Tag Archives: Rome

Apr11

Christmas in Italy – An exploratory stroll to the Arch of Drusus

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Christmas in Italy – An exploratory stroll to the Arch of Drusus

In keeping with the tradition of adventure, Sarah and I went on a big trip for Christmas and New Years!

This year, we met up with Sarah’s family in Italy, traveling to Rome and Florence; not quite a perfect midpoint for everyone, but it was close enough. And, also, you know. Rome. Florence. Amazing!

Please forgive me for some of these being a bit out of order… the posts are organized somewhat chronologically… but also organized by theme and location.  Some may not be exactly in chronological order, so for reference please see the initial summary post, which has a complete day-by-day, blow-by-blow account of the adventure.

 

Monday, 25-Dec-2017

A quick aside from the previous day’s adventure: after our Christmas Day lunch, I was feeling a bit more restless than the rest of the group. So as to not stress everyone out by pacing around the living room, I picked out a random destination from some interesting historic sites in Rome, and headed out.

My target was the Drusian Arch – one of the oldest known arches in Rome, who’s history has been lost to time. It’s also called the “Arch of Drusus”, though history doesn’t show any connections between this arch, and the Roman commander named Drusus.

 

Either way, it was a fairly short walk (maybe 5 miles total) from where we were staying, and seemed as good a destination as any for my quick constitutional.

It turned out to be a truly lovely walk – I passed the Forum and the Colosseum on the way, and traipsed through some really interesting little gardens and squares as I went. That’s what I enjoy most about European cities; the fact that they’re steeped in so much history, and that every little square has something neat about it. “Ohh, this is named after Georgius Ponteius, he invented the number eight”, or something similarly ridiculous and cool.

That’s… that’s really it. I walked to the arch, took a few pictures, and then looped back to the house. The arch itself was… smaller, I think? Yeah, smaller than I expected. I didn’t expect anything huge, of course, but this was surprisingly less intimidating than I’d expected. That may have been caused by the fact that a road went through the arch too – a literal “I’m driving home from work today” one-way street.

That’s Europe, though. “Ahh, walking home from work. Almost there, just have to pass this unfathomably ancient piece of history, then I’ll take a left onto the next street.”

Apr10

Christmas in Italy – The Basilicas of Christmas Day

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Christmas in Italy – The Basilicas of Christmas Day

In keeping with the tradition of adventure, Sarah and I went on a big trip for Christmas and New Years!

This year, we met up with Sarah’s family in Italy, traveling to Rome and Florence; not quite a perfect midpoint for everyone, but it was close enough. And, also, you know. Rome. Florence. Amazing!

Please forgive me for some of these being a bit out of order… the posts are organized somewhat chronologically… but also organized by theme and location.  Some may not be exactly in chronological order, so for reference please see the initial summary post, which has a complete day-by-day, blow-by-blow account of the adventure.

 

Monday, 25-Dec-2017

 

Christmas Morning! Ohh man! Wake up and open presents! Eat delicious Italian breakfast! Coffee! Ahhh!!

Yep. Huge changes from when we were all little – instead of getting up early, screaming, and opening presents, we got up early, screamed, drank coffee, and then opened presents! Huge difference.

Of course, after that initial tomfoolery, things did get a little different than back home. Instead of enjoying a snowy morning of playing outside, or maybe taking a stroll before making lunch, we went to a few Basilicas. Because that’s what you can do in Rome – just wander around and quickly see a few basilicas.

The streets were eerily quiet when we started out, but honestly not as empty as I would have expected for this level of holiday. There weren’t many shops open, but there were a lot of people milling about; though whether they were tourists or Romans, I honestly couldn’t quite tell. Regardless, the city wasn’t packed, but it sure wasn’t empty either.

Interesting aside – tourists weren’t that easy to pick out, at least for me, here in Rome. Maybe that’s because I don’t live there, and don’t notice all of the tells… or maybe just because Romans are such a diverse and energetic bunch?

As for the actual places we saw:

  • Santa Maria della Vittoria (a Minor Basilica) – Our first stop of the day, with tons of sculptures and angels; a really cool difference from the usual flat stone and paintings. The whole building seemed to be sculpted with a single plan in mind, with 3D movement everywhere.
  • Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore (a Major Basilica) – Not quite as big as St. Peter’s, though I don’t think any building in the world is quite as impressive as St. Peter’s. Santa Maria Maggiore is still gloriously huge – It’s a major Papal Basilica (one of four in the world, all in Rome), and had services actively going on while we visited. I can’t even begin to describe the artwork, except to say that it was really cool and intensely impressive.
  • Basilica of Saint Praxedes (another Minor Basilica) – My first major relic! Here they have a column that Jesus was supposedly flogged against, prior to his crucifiction. Sort of macabre, but really interesting to see, especially since it was just in a corner of the church, instead of behind 20ft of security doors like you’d see in the States.
  • San Bernardo alle Terme (an abbatial church) – Not actually a basilica! This church is part of an abbey, and is thus technically an “Abbatial Church”. Neat! Architecturally, it’s a cool circular church, with a series of gorgeous statues around the perimeter.
    As a note, kind of neat seeing 4 men and 4 women statues

Bottom line is – these places were amazing. Each church could have easily been a major tourist destination anywhere else in the world… but here in Rome, they were nearly just another building. There were people there, of course, but not the crowds that one would expect.

Though maybe that was due to it being Christmas Day.

Which, it being Christmas Day and all, we didn’t want to stay out too late in the day. We were all pretty low-energy, even with the revitalizing scent of incense cloying to us, and so we headed back to the house after those four. We debated going onward, but the allure of lunch was starting to call us in, back to hearth and home.

The rest of the day was quite lovely, and definitely relaxing. I headed off on a bit of an adventure of my own for a bit (Ed Note: See post “Walking to the Drusian Arch” for details), but the day stayed quite relaxing and luxurious aside from that. We relaxed, chatted, and all continued catching up.

Dinner kept to the same theme, though it was definitely as decadent as one would expect from a dinner in Rome. Since we assumed that all of the main restaurants would be closed on Christmas Day, we had planned on making our own little feast – a light salad, followed by a nice pasta dish, and then a heaping plate of roast beef paired with an excellent red wine. We ate, laughed, talked, and sipped our way through the evening, bring an excellent Christmas to a close.

Apr9

Christmas in Italy – Christmas Eve adventures, Villa Borguese, Trevi Fountain, Altar of the Fatherland, and the Great Synagogue of Rome

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Christmas in Italy – Christmas Eve adventures, Villa Borguese, Trevi Fountain, Altar of the Fatherland, and the Great Synagogue of Rome

In keeping with the tradition of adventure, Sarah and I went on a big trip for Christmas and New Years!

This year, we met up with Sarah’s family in Italy, traveling to Rome and Florence; not quite a perfect midpoint for everyone, but it was close enough. And, also, you know. Rome. Florence. Amazing!

Please forgive me for some of these being a bit out of order… the posts are organized somewhat chronologically… but also organized by theme and location.  Some may not be exactly in chronological order, so for reference please see the initial summary post, which has a complete day-by-day, blow-by-blow account of the adventure.

 

Sunday, 24-Dec-2017

 

I believe I mentioned that our AirBnB had a patio up top, didn’t I?

 

Well, what does one do with a patio when in Rome? Clearly they enjoy some sunrise yoga! Or, at least Sarah and I do, since we’re crazy enough to get up and brave the freezing morning just to do yoga. Or Henry, who was crazy enough to come with us and take some awesome pictures.

With a start like that, you need to keep the energy flowing – so a group of us headed out to do some walking around town. What we found was a park named the Villa Borguese, which happened to have a bike rental station. Not just any bikes, though… a four person bike.

 

Not like four-people-in-a-row, but two and two, forming a little square of people pedaling away. I took the drivers seat so that Sarah, Bill, and Greta could focus on taking pictures – while I’m not a bad photographer, I fully cede that I was indubitably the worst of the group… not a bad thing, since it meant that I got to be in a lot of the pictures, and I got to steer us through all sorts of crazy adventures throughout the park… including one small bit of off-roading that may or may not have been planned.

After our morning cardio (trust me, having four people pedaling only helps so much… the weight of the bike easily countered any extra power we had), we headed onward into the city to see the sights – Henry and Leah rejoined us after a bit, and we saw two of the other major sights that we’d been looking forward to – the Trevi Fountain, and the Altar of the Fatherland.

 

Something about Rome – the sights sneak up on you. We’d been following a map to find the Trevi Fountain, but didn’t realize we were already there until we turned a small corner and ran right into it (not literally into the fountain… but close enough).

The Trevi Fountain is an amazing sculpture carved into the side of a building, seemingly growing organically out of the marble of the walls. I loved wandering around it, just absorbing all of the tiny details that the sculptors had included… the quality of craftmanship all over Rome was astounding, but the Trevi Fountain is an amazing example of how well the masters had learned to coax life from marble.

I feel strange writing that phrase… but it’s honestly the most accurate that I can think of. The fountain honestly felt alive, as if Neptune was about to reach down and pluck my sandwich from my hands.

 

From the Trevi, we headed onward to the Altar of the Fatherland, a monument created much more recently by the facist government right before World War II. It was intended to instill national pride in a country recently united, molding the disparate groups of Italians into one country; and it does quite a good job at being intimidating and beautiful.

Thanks to Bill tracking down a ticket office, we were able to ride a special elevator up to the top of the monument, getting an amazing panorama view of the entire city. It was an amazing sight, and while Greta and Henry did an impromptu photoshoot with a pair of pigeons that they saw, the rest of us had a blast trying to pick out various monuments across the expanse in front of us.

Once the star of the shoot had flown off (honestly, neither Henry nor Greta could explain why they had decided to do a full photoshoot with a random pigeon… maybe Roman pigeons are telepathic?) we used our vantage point to plot out a bit of a wandering route, and headed down to explore more of the city.

Here, we split ways for a bit – Bill, Greta, Henry and Lead headed off toward the house via a large Christmas market, while Sarah and I aimed for the Great Synagogue of Rome. We’d seen it from the Altar of the Fatherland – the Great Synagogue is the only square dome in the entire city, and is located right near what had once been the Jewish quarter of the city.

Finding it wasn’t too hard, thankfully, though we did get turned around a bit once or twice… possibly due to the amazing smells of a trattoria or gellateria. We stayed (mostly) strong though, and quickly started into the museum and tours of the synagogue.

First – the architecture. This synagogue was beautiful, in a really interesting/strange way. It’s not Sephardic (North African / Spanish) or Ashkenazi (Eastern European) Jewish – it’s actually a unique blend of the two cultures… which means that, where all the churches have renditions of humans, the Synagogue was almost completely geometric, with beautiful murals and mosaics surrounding soaring columns and bright colors. A super neat change of pace after all of the huge basilicas.

Second – the museum. Really interesting, since Rome’s Jewish population came together from all corners of the world, bringing a huge mesh of traditions and cultural relics together into one community. Honestly a bit overwhelming, especially since everything had detailed notes and information included – something US museums have pretty often, but it was pretty rare in Rome.

Sarah and I escaped after a while, starting our beautiful trundle back to the house, where an amazing dinner of pasta, fish, and excellent wine awaited us, courtesy of Chef Henry.