ROMA with JQ - March 23-25

I know this post is long overdue, I've just been swamped with school work and deadlines are approaching faster than I can blink.


On Friday, 23 March, JQ and I went to Rome. We went separately and met up at the hostel. The hostel we stayed in was right on the beach and in an area called Ostia, it's about 30 minute train ride from Rome's city center. By the time each of us got there, it was already night so we just hung out at the hostel and planned our weekend.

On Saturday we overslept :) but we still managed to see everything we had planned to see!

It was a drizzly day but we were prepared (thank you Weather.com). We went to the Colosseum first, by the time we got there were were so hungry (there wasnt much left at breakfast since we overslept and missed it and got the last 10 min of it!). So we had lunch first at this little restaurant near the Colosseum then we tackled the sights on a stomach full of rigatoni carbonara and ravioli, mmm yummy.




The Colosseum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colosseum) was PACKED but definately worth seeing. We asked someone, another tourist, to take a picture of us and instead of asking us to say "cheese" she said "ok say 'my parents are paying for me to be here'" so both of us look rather annoyed in the photograph. We didnt really thank her, and I dont know why she would say something like that to someone she doesn't know...or anyone for that matter. Anyway! We hung around there for a bit, looking at the structure from the various floors. JQ had her film camera with her and I ended up the subject of many of her pictures. "ok..go stand over there...now turn to your left and take a step back" or something along those lines is what I would be instructed to do! I think i got laughed at by somebody at somepoint!

After the Colosseum we walked around to the Arch of Constantine that's right next to the Colosseum. The Arch commemorates Constantine's triumph over Maxentius...built in 315 AD. Then we walked through some ruins, Foro Romano, towards the Arch of Titus. I recognized some of the remaining structures but don't remember their names (learned about them in Ancient to Medieval Art with Peggy at Drew). As we walked away from the Arch of Titus (who I think at some point supervised the construction of the Colosseum) we walked past a huge museum, Vittoriano e Museo del Risorgimento, which I realized was having a Marc Chagall exhibit. So we, being the good art students that we are, went in and took a look. I was hoping they would have the painting, I and the Village (http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/b/b9/300px-Chagall_IandTheVillage.jpg)
but they didn't. :( But it was still a good show, lots of people though. They had a lot of his sketches and the final versions, so it was interesting to see his progression and what he chose to eliminate/keep for the final painting.

Us after the Chagall exhibit...attempting to get a normal picture!!

































Anyway, from there we went to the Trevi Fountain and Spanish Stairs. By the time we go to the Spanish Stairs it was already dark (we made lots of stops on the way into small shops and such, and also a stop involving a shared nutella crepe and nutella icecream). After the Spanish Stairs we had dinner at this cafe where we saw the cutest old couple. We started talking to them; they've been married 40 years, been together though for 55 years. They're from Naples and were visiting Rome. They asked us about what we were doing in Rome and in Italy and we explained we're art students going to art school in Florence. And they both exclaimed "OHH studentezze! Firenze!!! OOHH!!" (we had this whole conversation in Italian, both JQ and I filled in the blanks if me/her didnt know the word the other was looking for!)































After dinner we walked past a store and went in. Tried on a bunch of clothes...this one was particularly attractive, wouldn't you agree?

We left the store having bought matching neon orange boyshorts underwear...

While on the train back to Ostia, we were sitting facing this older rather small woman who was making the most intense facial expressions and they just got more and more intense as she drifted further into her doze-mode. Her brow was furrowed, lips as if she had just sucked something sour or bitter....whatever it was...it was an expression of disgust and of disbelief!!! So us being us, decided that JQ should sit with her back toward the lady so now JQ is sitting infront of me facing me...and now JQ is trying to imitate her...we were hysterically laughing. The lady was getting off at our stop, as the train slowed she asked us as we stood near the door, what we were laughing at (in Italian) and we responded by explaining "um...un 'ha ha ha' tra amiche" (a "hahah" between friends)...and she just smiled and nodded.
















JQ attempting to imitate....



















.....me laughing at JQ.

































We went back to the hostel exhausted but had enough energy to be silly do makeovers and such in the bathroom in the orange underswear and black longsleeve shirts. while this lady was fast asleep in the room (6 person dorm room style). At somepoint though she woke up to go to the bathroom and opened the door to find us both standing in the bathroom, with different make styles done to each half of our faces and all three of us jumped and yelped! haha. good times. At somepoint we even tried covering half my face up with JQ's concealer and makeup so that i looked white. It was weird though becuase my features clearly aren't caucasian!


We went to bed after i spent about 10 minutes washing off the layers of foundation (took about 3 soaped face washes for it to be completely clean though it felt all...clay-like until the next morning!). Again, we overslept but we didnt mind. We had breakfast then took a walk along the beach...rather down the jetty and back to the hotel becuase it smelled and was kinda littered, but we did spend about 45 minutes there, and it was extra nice becuase it was sunny and not rainy like Saturday.



We checked out and headed to Vatican City, which was crowded like WOAH and the lines were crazy long, so we didnt go in but hung around outside, then we walked to the Castel Sant' Angelo and then spent about 20 minutes walking around the castle wall trying to figure out how to get in becuase we had seen a doorway but it said no entry...well we asked someone how to get in and he pointed to that door...then we realized that it mean that there was no entry through that specific side of the door...we make a good team ;)

<-- Outside the Vatican




















Castel Sant' Angelo was definately a place I recommend to EVERYONE. We got to explore around the castle, some rooms were off limits, but a lot of the ones open to the public were gallery type spaces, there were multiple exhibits, two of which I particularly liked: a show on famous architect's chair designs!!! (which happens to be what my children's book is about for my illustration class, so i thought i could take pictures and use those to work from but no photography allowed. But some of the chairs on display were: Thonet's rocking chair, and a swivel chair, Le Corbusier's LC2 (i think...its that boxy looking leather chair with metal tubing structure), the Barcelona by Mies Van Der Rohe in 1929, Eames's lounge chair and ottoman and many others!! it was pretty cool. I especially wanted to sit in the rocking chair cause it reminded me of home becuase it was the EXACT same shape/model! there were also chairs by Mart Stam, Marcel Breuer, Renzo Frau and Fero Saarinen (I might have misspelled that name)). The other exhibit I thoroghly enjoyed, as did JQ, had the work of, I think an Spanish or Italian artist, don't remember his first name, but it's ________ Horacio Garcia or some combination of those three names! But he had some really awesome colours and patterns, lots of linear/geometric work and playing with colours disappearing or changing to grayscale as if behind a filter of somesort. He also had two video installations which I liked enough that it made me revamp my final project for Digital Multimedia.




After the galleries, we went to the cafe, got some goodies and in the process made friends with the staff! The two younger waiters, Eduardo and Marco, were hilarious, they kept yelling AMERICANA at the top of their lungs whenever we said something very American, like "cool" or "nice!" (we were chatting with the waitress who is half American (her mom is from New Jersey). So before we left the cafe, we got a picture with them. We headed up to the terrace which had an INCREDIBLE almost 360 view of Rome, with the sun setting behind the Vatican. It was pretty cool.

Marco is standing next to me and Eduardo is next to Marco.

After the castle, we went to the Pantheon, which had closed!!!!!! :( we missed it by a few minutes...or so we thought it was a few minutes (ill explain in a bit). So we just walked in the direction of the train station to get back to Florence, tried getting on a bus but we weren't surei f we would get to the station, so we walked more, then I spotted a bus labeled "Stazione" and we bolted for it and barely got on...literally as it about to pull away from the stop. So we get to the station and go to buy our tickets and the ticketman says "there is a train in 10 minutes at 7:50 but its full...so you can take the 8:30 train...", we looked at him rather confused and said "but it's only 6:40..." and he looks at us and says "ah no...its 7:40". So turns out, the clocks were all set forward an hour, and we had NO idea and went through the whole day thinking it was regular time...so then we realized that the Pantheon had not closed a few minutes before but a WHOLE HOUR! Haha, we got a good laugh out of it, got our stuff from the lockers and got dinner at a Japanese fastfood thing (but better than fastfood, made in front of you...I've never seen them in the US but someone said there are a few in Chicago or something). We were TIRED like WOAH having been on our feet for pretty much two days straight, so we were quite happy to sit and wait for 20 minutes before the train was scheduled to leave! We got back into Florence around 10:30, and I went straight to bed after unpacking and PASSED OUT!!!!!!!

All in all, it was a very sucessful trip and loads of fun. Next time I get my way over to Rome, I'm going to go INTO the Vatican and make sure I get to the Pantheon at the right time :D