Odds and Ends and the Sisteen Chapel

Monday night here now so I'm just stopping off at the Rome Center on my way home from a nice dinner. So far food-wise I'd have to say all the meat dishes are really the way to go. Pasta and pizza is fine but not really better than the states. But I've had some steak and chicken dinners that were unbelievable. I typed most of this blog entry yesterday during our day off, then I'll add today's events briefly at the end....

This was a Sunday spent mostly in the presence of gelato and shade. It has become stupendously hot here over the last couple days and today felt like a new trip high. So everyone here turns to gelato. I am slightly partial to granitas to compose myself in the heat. Granitas are like gourmet slurpees. I remember years ago in the days of bike riding around Edmonds, the Five Corners mini mart randomly sold granitas for a short stretch, and I bought them up like wild fire, wondering from what foreign land such a sublime taste hailed. But just as suddenly as they came into my life, they vanished again. I was the only customer I guess. But here they are everywhere so we have had a nice reunion.

I will backtrack a little more since I didn’t really accomplish anything today. After gratefully rounding up all of my luggage in the Rome airport on the day of my arrival, I was slowly following signs to the taxi stand. The instructions the UW professors gave to us were to make sure to get an official taxi to avoid “charlatans”. But as I was walking in the direction of the official taxis, a charlatan came up beside me and asked if I needed a taxi. I said yes and how much to Rome, and he quoted me 70 euros, 10 more than I was told I should pay. But after spending all day in planes and airports I just wanted to get out of there so I agreed, and we promptly turned around and went in the complete opposite direction of the official taxis. Thinking to myself “I am currently in the process of being ripped off” made it kind of fun.

The driver took me on what can best be described as literally the ride of my life. Reality was suspended after a while as he flew down the highway, weaving through traffic like it was standing still. Hitting the city did nothing to dull his need for speed. Lane lines were just a silly superstition. He made moves that I would have been too scared to attempt even if I was racing on Xbox. In Rome, the way they avoid accidents is to speed up even more and use the horn like a bodily function. But we made what I’m assuming was ridiculously good time to the Campo de Fiori, which the UW Rome Center borders. Really the first thing I noticed about Italy was the graffiti that covered everything on the way into the city. All modern day Michelangelos I suppose. By the end of my trip I expect to be run over two or three times and have someone’s initials spray-painted on my ass. When I finally located the building that houses the UW Rome Center—which even though I was dropped off like 30 seconds away from it, took me about an hour and a half to find due to the ridiculously poor directions the professor provided, and I was on the short end compared to how long it took some other students—I saw some graffiti even I could understand in the big black “FUCK” written right next to the door.

Having now seen two other apartments, I can say for sure that we got the short end of the housing stick. It takes about a half hour to walk from our place to the UWRC, where we need to go twice a day on most days. But usually we can hijack a bus. Busses require one euro tickets, which you buy at random places like tobacco shops, and then you validate the ticket on little machines once you actually get on the bus. But you only need a ticket in the unfortunate incident that an official gets on the bus to check validations, which I’ve yet to see happen. So I’ve ridden the bus maybe 50 times and only bought a ticket once, which is standard practice for most Italians. We live above the law.

Monday: Rose early this morning and got in line for the Vatican Museum. It's like waiting to get into Disneyland. I expected to hear screams of delight from the Sisteen Chapel coming through the walls like Space Mountain. I also was hoping for Michelangelo lookalikes walking around signing autographs. We got in after about an hour in line and headed straight for the Capella Sistene. It was basically wall-to-wall packed in there, and photographs, and speaking, were prohibited. They had several security guards there to yell at people who tried to sneak some pictures, and every time the crowd murmur would start to grow they would clap their hands and yell "SILENCE!" But I digress. Michael Angelo was quite impressed with what his namesake accomplished. There was great variety to the characters, the colors were all really vibrant which is a hotbutton issue for purists I guess, they think Michelangelo meant it to be darker (I'm just full of useful historical tidbits!), and some of the figures had a real imposing size and weight to them, almost like comic book characters but not cartoonish. Did that description do justice to one of the defining artistic statements in the history of the western world?? I only wished I had known what more of the panels represented before I saw it, but I bought a book on the way out. Independent learning is fun! A group field trip to Hadrian's Villa tomorrow, supposedly one of the hottest places in Italy, and I thought today was intense.